Good morning. It’s so rare that I can come to you with good news. But here’s some now. The rate of suicides among young people in the United States has dropped 11 percent below projections since the rollout of 988, the national suicide prevention hotline. It dropped even more significantly in states with the highest numbers of calls, according to a new study that Ellen Barry, who covers mental health, wrote about this week. Nearly 4,400 adolescents and young adults are alive, we think, because of the program. The Department of Health and Human Services introduced 988 in July 2020 with bipartisan support and a $1.5 billion investment for the crisis centers that field calls. (It replaced a 10-digit hotline number.) And it appears to be working. Yesterday, I peppered Ellen with emails about the study, and about what she learned from it.
A success storySam: I guess what I’d like to know is, What surprised you most about the findings? Ellen: Ordinarily, it’s difficult to prove how much a single factor contributed to the positive trend in youth suicides after 2022. But the authors came up with ingenious ways to isolate the 988 effect. It turned out suicides went down quite a lot more in states where people used 988 more. Then the authors tried to exclude other explanations: Did suicide rates drop as much among people over 65, who are less likely to use 988? They did not. Did they go down in England, where there was no hotline change? They did not. Also — I was just grateful to report some good news. Were we in a youth suicide crisis during the coronavirus pandemic? Youth suicide rates peaked in 2021, after going up and up and up for years. Since then there has been a gradual decline. One expert I spoke to, Dr. Laura Erickson-Schroth of the JED Foundation, said that peak rate may have been abnormally high, with a specific cohort of young people who were the first to encounter social media in adolescence and then hit hard by pandemic shutdowns. She said part of the reason for the drop in youth suicide is a regression to the mean. Do you have any sense of what the exchanges between callers and the hotline look like? The journalist Jason Cherkis worked on a 988 hotline for about a year. The calls were often from people who had no one to talk to: Caregivers for parents with dementia, or lonely young men in rural areas, or older people angry about how their lives had turned out. “You search for the threads of their life that they can hold onto, the kindling,” he said. It was draining, but also deeply satisfying. “I’m just trying to help this stranger,” he said. “All you have to do is listen.” Last summer the Trump administration stopped one element of the hotline, the Press 3 option for L.G.B.T.Q.+ callers. It said the hotline would “no longer silo” services to that community and “focus on serving all help seekers.” Then Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this week that the agency would restore Press 3. Is that a big deal? Yes! While Press 3 was active, it made up almost 10 percent of all 988 calls. Read Ellen’s story about the success of 988 here.
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American soldiers fought the Taliban in Afghanistan for 20 years. Hundreds of thousands of locals risked their lives to help the American war effort. Many of those people evacuated to the U.S. for their own safety once the Americans left in 2021. But the U.S. government sent a group of 1,100 to a military base in Qatar, promising them a path to U.S. settlement if they passed further checks. That’s not what happened. The U.S. is working on a plan that would force Afghans to choose between returning to their country under Taliban rule and being sent to Congo, an African nation suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. “Now we are stuck between bad and worse options,” one of the refugees told The Times. U.S. lawmakers in both parties are unhappy with the plan. “We made promises to those fighting by our side to bring them to the U.S.,” Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, said. “We should keep our promises.”
Matthew Connors spent 13 years photographing authoritarian regimes and those who fight them. See his images. Here’s a column by Michelle Goldberg on Tucker Carlson’s criticism of Trump. Human made. Human played. 75% off. Subscribe to New York Times Games for 75% off your first year. Our best offer is only available for a limited time. Relax and recharge with our full portfolio of games, including Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, the Crossword and more — all mindfully made by humans.
Exodus: A community in India believes it is one of ancient Israel’s Ten Lost Tribes. They’re trying to move to modern Israel. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about one striking image from Lebanon. Celebrated conductor: Michael Tilson Thomas made the San Francisco Symphony a model of collegial music-making, artistic adventurousness and community engagement. He died at 81.
35— That is the minimum number of peregrine falcon pairs nesting in New York City. They live on the George Washington Bridge and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and on buildings up and down Manhattan. (Look, I like birds.) Meet one of their chicks, residing outside the 14th floor of an office building in the Financial District.
N.F.L.: The Las Vegas Raiders took Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza with the top pick in the N.F.L. Draft. “I can’t wait to learn,” he said on the call. See his family’s reaction. Premier League: Liam Rosenior lasted just 107 days as head coach of Chelsea. Go inside his disastrous tenure. FIFA: The 2026 World Cup is supposed to bring millions of visitors and billions of dollars to North America this summer. With two months to go, that boom hasn’t materialized. Soccer: New research reveals troubling data about the impact on the brain of performing “headers.”
I like to make French toast on the weekend. It marks a departure from morning weekday cereal bolted while standing over the sink. And I like this recipe for French toast amandine because it’s luxurious, even sublime. Cover everything with butter and maple syrup, and serve with sliced fruit. (I’m seeing some good strawberries these days.) This could become your Saturday routine.
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