988 psychological well being hotline shuts down amid widespread outage

The 988 psychological well being hotline skilled a widespread outage on Thursday.

The hotline, a service assist line for these experiencing psychological well being emergencies, was out of service for a number of hours.

These trying to name the road are given a message that the road is "experiencing a service outage."

The Division of Well being and Human Providers introduced the outage on Twitter. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Sarah Lovenheim wrote in a tweet that the nationwide system outage got here from Intrado, a contractor for disaster suppliers that helps the 988 hotline.

"We have taken fast motion to make sure various 988 channels can be found to the general public; anybody proper now can textual content 988 or chat 988lifeline.org, for instance," Lovenheim wrote.

She mentioned the federal authorities is in shut contact with Intrado to "restore service swiftly."

The hotline launched in July, after the Nationwide Suicide Prevention Lifeline introduced it could change its quantity from 1-800-273-TALK to 988.