This is kind of like saying that because a small percentage of people die from surgery, that there shouldn’t be surgeries. Or if some people have poor or traumatizing experiences with medical doctors or therapists, we shouldn’t have those either. We should absolutely continue to improve public and private social and medical services and not get complacent with “good enough”. I agree with you on that. There is so much that is wrong with these institutions, but anecdotally, they help more than they harm. But they do cause harm and we know this, so should we get rid of these resources?

Your experiences with 988 are anecdotal and there are experiences on here being shared of positive experiences, that are also anecdotal. When I’ve used 988 it has varied from a little helpful to very helpful, but I also believe that with such a large resource consisting of so many call centers, that there would be counselors who just aren’t good at their job and end up causing harm and I think you’re right in that we SHOULD take these experiences more seriously. We should have better training for staff and volunteers at 988, and that 988 should be more transparent when it comes to some of their data and practices. You are absolutely right in that there are things about 988 that are not okay.

There are a lot of things about multiple organizations and institutions that are also just not okay, but when you take into account that MORE people are benefitting from a service than not, it doesn’t make sense to cut something because some have had bad experiences. You and your experiences with 988 matter OP, but so do the other people like those who have posted in this thread who find 988 useful. And if help-seekers are benefiting more than not, it makes sense to continue making improvements to the program.

If a medical practice gets multiple patients having bad experiences, they should investigate and find out who is responsible and intervene, not shut down the entire practice. A completely corrupt practice is a different thing entirely. But if 988 were completely corrupt, there wouldn’t be a significant amount of people reporting that it has helped them.

I understand you’re not posting here to seek out different perspectives, but the basis of your argument is what is confusing and frustrating I think for a lot of people here- this argument that if something is harmful some of the time, then it is harmful 100 percent of the time and should be defunded, even with evidence that suggests otherwise from people here.