SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
In 2022, the federal government rolled out a national hotline, 988, to help people who are suicidal or experiencing a psychiatric emergency. But counselors who work at these crisis centers are sometimes targeted by deceitful callers. Melissa Ellin of member station WGLT reports from Illinois. And a warning that this story includes details of sexually harassing behavior.
MELISSA ELLIN, BYLINE: When she was 22, Lily Lantz decided to take a job as a counselor at her local 988 call center. Her brother had attempted suicide as a teen, and she wanted to help others in crisis. But she quickly became disillusioned with the job at Path Crisis Center in Bloomington, Illinois. She and other counselors say, almost every day, they received sexually inappropriate and verbally abusive phone calls.
LILY LANTZ: They would sometimes say things like, your voice sounds so good right now. You're making me feel so good right now. Horrifying - horrifying to hear that.
ELLIN: More than 200 centers across the country accept 988 calls. Greg Borders works at a crisis center in Portland, Oregon, called Lines for Life. He says abusive callers were an issue even before 988 went national.
GREG BORDERS: It's certainly not anything new. I've been at Lines for Life for 12 years, and it existed long before I got there, and it continues to exist.
ELLIN: Calls, texts, and chats are abusive if they include harassment of any kind, racist or sexist attacks on the counselor or pranks. At the Portland Center, they account for roughly 1% of the 5,000 interactions they have each month. The numbers aren't tracked nationally. But just one abusive call can be distressing for a counselor. Lily Lantz lost her job in June during layoffs, but she won't look for a new job as a 988 counselor. NPR spoke to six other counselors in three states who felt the same. One of them quit to avoid the abuse.
LANTZ: We're losing good people because of the emotional toll.
ELLIN: Managers on the hotlines say there's no easy solution. Calls to 988 are anonymous, and centers can't block numbers because even abusive callers may have a real crisis in the future. Path CEO Adam Carter created a system to deter abuse.
ADAM CARTER: And so if that person is calling in back to back to back, we can then say, ah, phone number 123-4567 is on this list for the next 24 hours.
ELLIN: People on that list can be transferred to a voicemail informing them their behavior is inappropriate. But first, counselors have to check if the person who's calling is at risk of harming themselves. That's a must for every single call. Lily Lantz says abusive callers would use this policy to trap her.
LANTZ: They would say that they were suicidal. Whether that was true or not, I can't really say, but they were masturbating on the phone.
ELLIN: Yet Path's voicemail strategy is more than other centers have. In Colorado, six ex-counselors are suing a crisis center in federal court. They say they were not allowed to hang up on abusive callers without permission, which was difficult to get. The crisis center denies that. The former counselors' attorney, Iris Halpern, says the crisis centers have to comply with antidiscrimination law.
IRIS HALPERN: Even if harassment was common in the past, the law still says, yeah, this could be difficult, but you have to do something.
ELLIN: Counselors at multiple crisis centers say there should be legal ramifications to deter abuse. Take the other emergency number, 911. Local and state laws bar repeated misuse of the line. None of that exists for 988. Lily Lantz and other counselors say there have to be changes if 988 is going to be sustainable.
For NPR News, I'm Melissa Ellin in Bloomington, Illinois.
DETROW: That story comes from NPR's partnership with WGLT and KFF Health News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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