- Hello and welcome to Living In The Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

A new three digit mental health hotline goes into effect across the country this month, replacing the ten digit Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

In Pennsylvania, call centers are preparing for an increase in callers.

- You have reached the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

988 is the new mental health phone number for an existing service, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

- The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline really took steps prior to COVID to make it easier for individuals to remember the phone number.

So rather than needing to remember ten digits, you only need to know three.

- Kristen Houser is with the Pennsylvania Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services within the Department of Human Services.

- In states like Pennsylvania, where we have county based mental health services, each county might have its own local support line, and those are all different numbers.

So when we look at making it easier to utilize the national lifeline, it's really just to increase access and ensure that anybody anywhere at any time has a resource that's easy to remember.

- She says 13 centers across the state are already answering calls, but her department is watching to see if this easier to remember number will impact call volume and therefore drive a need for more operators.

- That's something we will be monitoring closely, but I think concerns over workforce are certainly relevant, SAMHSA did provide some additional funding to the Lifeline call centers to assist with that right now.

- SAMHSA, short for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, has set a first year goal of 90% answer rate in each state.

Houser says PA is already answering about 85% of calls coming in.

- Currently we are staffed.

I think that that's the most important thing to know.

It's an existing service.

We're just changing the phone number right now.

So we have our trained professionals.

It is answered by a live person.

When callers dial that number, they will be asked if they need to speak to a Spanish speaking counselor or if they would like to access the Veterans Crisis Line.

- Calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline spiked in 2017 when a song citing the phone number became popular.

The number of calls has been increasing each year since, approaching almost 60,000 last year in Pennsylvania.

Houser says her team is ready for another increase should it come with the new 988 number.

- We feel pretty good about where we are right now and the systems that we've put in place.

- In PA, 988 is now active for telephone use as well as text and chat.

That will do it for this edition of Living In The Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney hoping you stay happy and healthy.