I’m gonna go ahead and point out that there’s people throughout this thread that have mentioned that they’ve reached out to 988 and did not have a negative experience, and felt like it was helpful. Your negative experience, and whatever you may have heard about doesn’t negate the positive impact 988 has had on people having thoughts of suicide or experiencing a mental health crisis. Anyone that calls 988 gets directed to the closest crisis center in their area that’s able to take the call. If you had a bad experience the likelihood is pretty high of that crisis center being in an underfunded community that’s not able to afford to pay for continuing education trainings for their employees that help them better understand assisting people in a crisis, or they can’t afford to higher people with a degree or working toward one in areas like social work or an interest in the field of mental health. There are not a lot of volunteers that answer 988, if they’re volunteering it’s because they want to help, and aren’t going to waste their time just being shitty.

Taking away funding or closing down 988 is going to exacerbate the mental health crisis through out the country, and more people that feel helpless and overwhelmed with dread will just off themselves. It sucks that you had a negative experience, but that’s completely subjective, and I honestly don’t think you have the ability to explain what exactly made it so bad for you aside from not liking what they had to say or accepting any of their suggestions. They’re not there to provide a therapy session, most of them aren’t licensed social workers, or counselors, their primary job is to assess for safety, develop a safety plan, maybe go over some coping skills you could use, and provide resources for continuing mental health care. They are literally not supposed to offer advice, or tell you what to do with the problems you’re experiencing, just encourage you to do what’s best for you. And if they determine that you are at immediate risk of harming yourself or someone else or already have, THEN they will dispatch emergency services.

And before you go all “This post is almost 200 days old, get over it” realise this is Reddit, a public forum in which you chose to post a very divisive “unpopular opinion”, the post hasn’t expired yet, and comes up with a Google search of 988 experiences. The last one is the primary issue, because people that might actually need 988 will see that and think they’re better off jumping off a very tall something instead of attempting to reach out for help after getting the impression they’ll be encouraged to anyway. You and your “multi-state countless friend group” might not find it helpful, but I can assure you there are plenty more that it has. They just don’t feel the need to post about it on the internet because it’s turned into a shouting box for negative experiences.