Hi, Sarah,

I think it's fine to question stats and to ask questions-- I am a very vocal critic of 988 and Vibrant Emotional Health (I discuss that in my essay, and I regularly take them to ask on social media), but that stat is determined by a simple calculation of how many calls they receive juxtaposed against the number of times law enforcement/EMS are rolled out. Who vets any stat? Who watches over police departments when they release stats about officer-involved shootings? Probably nobody. Should there be more oversight of law enforcement? The prison system? The inpatient behavioral hospital system? The military? Schools? Yes. There should. Is there enough? Absolutely not. Does that mean we just throw up our hands and disbelieve any number or stat or figure? I don't know; I guess we can do that. But that doesn't leave us with much.

In my opinion, your own personal experience, though valid and is to be respected, isn't enough, frankly, to make blanket statements about a crisis response service that assists thousands and thousands of struggling people, all of whom are different from you and all of whom have different needs. Your personal experience makes you an expert in your own experience; nothing more; same as me. Maybe you would have been better suited by a peer support talk line, or a warm line. Those services, regrettably, aren't 24/7/365, and those people aren't trained to work with acutely suicidal individuals.

As far as my personal experience; I have never called 988, or 1-800-273-TALK. I did work at an inpatient crisis psychiatric hospital alongside friends and colleagues who answered those calls, and shared an office every single day for two years with our director of suicide prevention, who lost his own son to firearm suicide, and I spent many, many hours talking about the intricacies and faults and benefits and troubles of the Lifeline; I have also talked to many attempt survivors who used the service and sang its praises-- and some who hated it. Again; that's their experience; yours is yours.

If you make the claim, as I think you are making in your final two questions to me in your comment, that I have no business advocating for people to call 988 because I haven't used it myself; well, that is a fallacious argument. Do I have to become BFF's with a certain political candidate before I vote for them? Do I have to have witnessed an execution order to be against capital punishment or, worse, for it? Do you have to have gone through the police academy and have worked the streets in a police car for at least a year before you can make critical statements about law enforcement? Or support them?

The truth is that we cannot experience the complete and total depth and breadth of the world before us before formulating opinions and advocating for or against things. We do the best we can with the information we have, the knowledge we have, the experiences we have, and our learning about the experience of others.

Thanks for reading my essay and for writing your comment and for reading my response.