Congress presses VA for fixes to lingering suicide hotline outages 

Editor’s note: Veterans in need of emergency counseling can reach the Veterans Crisis Line by dialing 988 and selecting option 1 after connecting to reach a VA staffer. In addition, veterans, troops and their family members can also text 988 or 838255 for help or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.

Lawmakers want Veterans Affairs leaders to better secure the department’s suicide prevention hotline amid a spate of short-term outages in the emergency lifeline, even though officials have insisted those challenges have not resulted in widespread problems for operations.

On Monday, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., released a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough asking for “a more comprehensive review of the system’s reliability and resilience, backup and redundancy procedures, and related areas to ensure (the crisis line) is available every second of every day.”

“While it appears that in each recent incident the department … acted quickly to resolve the technology issues, rerouted calls, attempted to re-engage all dropped calls or chats, the volume of problems is concerning,” he wrote.

The letter’s release comes during National Suicide Prevention Month and just a few days after a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing into the hotline’s operations.

Dr. Matthew Miller, executive director of VA’s Office of Suicide Prevention, testified Sept. 18 that the Veterans Crisis Line has suffered 12 “noteable outages” in the last 12 months, down from the fiscal 2023 total. Most of those were the result of technology issues outside of VA’s operations.

About 700 callers were affected by those outages, and roughly 500 were reconnected with specialists after a short delay, according to VA officials. Others called back on their own, but staffers acknowledged that not every caller was brought back into the system.

The missed calls represented less than 0.1% of the total call volume to the crisis line last year. Since a national 988 number was established in July 2022 for suicide intervention, Veterans Crisis Line operators have seen a nearly 23% increase in calls and nearly 77% increase in texts from individuals seeking emergency mental health aid.

“We know that we’re saving veterans’ lives,” Miller told lawmakers. “Two published studies recently have found veteran callers were over five times more likely to have less distress and less suicide ideation at the end of the call compared to the beginning, were 11 times more likely to have reduced suicidal urgency at the end of the call than the beginning.”

But he acknowledged the need to improve the system even more.

“These outages (in the last year) varied in scope and impact,” he said. “However, none of them incapacitated Veterans Crisis Line services. Our commitment to modernization and improvement is critical to ensuring it can promptly respond when interruptions do arise.”

Lawmakers on the House panel echoed that sentiment while also encouraging veterans to reach out for help if needed, despite the system’s rare lapses. Tester asked for officials to share specific steps they plan on implementing to analyze past outages and coordinate with other federal agencies to prevent future ones.

About 17 veterans a day die as a result of suicide, according to the latest statistics from VA researchers.