A nationwide mental health hotline saved more lives than expected.

A new study found that suicide rates among young people dropped after the launch of the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, with thousands fewer deaths than researchers had initially predicted.

The research, published April 22 in JAMA, looked at suicide deaths from July 2022 through December 2024. During that time, deaths among 15- to 34-year-olds were about 11% lower than expected, based on past trends.

That’s 4,372 fewer deaths than projected, The New York Times reported.

What's more, researchers found that the 10 states with the biggest increases in 988 use saw an 18.2% drop in suicides compared to predictions. In the 10 states with the lowest hotline use, the decline was smaller at about 10.6%.

The findings suggest the hotline has lead to “a measurable reduction of deaths,” study co-author Dr. Vishal Patel, a resident physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told The Times.

“What our study has added,” he added, “is evidence for the deeper benefit of the program, and that is, that at the population level, among young people at least, suicide mortality is lower than it would have been without the program.”

The takeaway?

"The implication of that is that sustained funding for this program matters," Patel said.

The 988 hotline launched in July 2022, was created to replace a longer hotline phone number. It was backed by roughly $1.5 billion to expand crisis services, The Times said.

Since then, the hotline has responded to more than 25 million calls, texts and chats, according to federal data.

But experts noted that other changes, such as the end of COVID-19 and the launch of multiple mental health programs, may have also contributed to the results, making it hard to attribute them solely to the hotline.

“We were finally out of this crazy time, and there was a sense of optimism and hope,” Jonathan Singer, a professor of social work at Loyola University Chicago who was not involved in the study, told The Times.

Researchers tried to account for those factors. For example, they found a smaller decline in suicide rates (about 4.5%) among people over the age of 65 who are less likely to use the hotline.

They also found no similar drop in youth suicide rates in England, where the national crisis line remained unchanged.

Advocates say 988 still made an impact, especially since England did not have a similar improvement over the period.

“To me, that really helps hone in that this might really be the differentiator,” Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told The Times. “We are seeing potentially a pretty significant decline in suicides among young people. For public policy, this is strong evidence to double down on that we are doing.”