(KERO) — An outage disrupted service to the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, leaving the number without service for more than 13 hours.
The Department of Health and Human Services say they're investigating the outage which also impacted a separate substance abuse and mental health services helpline.
During the outage, help was still available through the 998 chat and text options. However, despite those options, HHS called the disruption unacceptable.
The 988 hotline launched over the summer amid concerns that call centers were overwhelmed and its need has been seen. In the first month it was available cisis calls increased 45% compared to the previous year.
