There is a new [April, 2026] paper in JAMA, Suicide Mortality Among Adolescents and Young Adults After Launch of a Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, stating that:
“Suicide remains a leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults in the US. In July 2022, the US launched the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, replacing the 10-digit 1-800-273-TALK number with a 3-digit number and investing more than $1.5 billion to expand crisis center capacity and workforce nationwide. In the subsequent 3 years, contacts to the lifeline more than doubled, with disproportionately higher use among adolescents and young adults. Whether population-level suicide mortality in this group changed after launch of the 988 Lifeline is unknown.”
“From July 2022 through December 2024, nationwide observed suicide mortality among individuals aged 15 to 34 years was lower than expected based on pre–988 Lifeline trends. During this period, 35 529 suicides were observed compared with 39 901 (95% CI, 38 924-40 878) expected suicides, corresponding to an 11.0% (95% CI, 8.7%-13.1%) reduction or 4372 (95% CI, 3395-5349) fewer suicides.”
“The 10 states with the largest increases in answered 988 calls after the launch had a 146.2% increase in monthly calls (from 32 635 to 80 338), whereas the 10 states with the smallest increases had a 23.6% increase in monthly calls (from 39 835 to 49 226).”
“This analysis found that launch of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline was associated with significant reductions in suicide mortality among adolescents and young adults nationally. Observed reductions were larger in states with the highest uptake of 988 Lifeline services.”
Psychiatry
If calls to 988 help mental health in general and reduce suicides, what happens if there is a possibility to display a conceptual architecture of the human mind, for mental disorders and addictions?
Simply, how much would it mean that mental disorders and addictions can be displayed by the responsible components in the brain and specific mechanisms, easing how they are explained and measured, to people living with the conditions and their loved ones?
A major part of the complexity of psychiatric disorders is that they are ‘unknown’ and not easily explained or understood, leading to assuming multiple things and trying multiple things, some of which may not work or become adverse over time.
This is one of the key interim goals for psychiatry: to define what the human mind is, as well as to use what it might mean to structure mental disorders in a way that is as simple as possible, underscored by empirically supported neuroscience.
So, knowing this, one of the major missions of any forward-looking psychiatric publication will be to delve into conceptual brain science or theoretical neuroscience, continuously to find answers towards moving the field forward.
This is because there are lots of reasons a lot of institutions and psychiatrists may not try, but for a publication, they can take that [responsibility] on, and make it a cause, while also running their regular communications.
This is what MJH Life Sciences, Psychiatric Times, and their Editor-in-Chief, John J. Miller, MD, should have tried, pursuing options that define functions in the brain, then postulating in the direction that would close in on progress for the field.
Already, neurons and their electrical and chemical signals are suitable candidates for the mind. Neurons can be excused because they are cells, and not anatomically flexible enough to adjust to all the respective specificities of functions.
But electrical signals [ions-predicated] and chemical signals [molecules] have all the flexibility to configure and determine the extent of functions.
This makes it possible to define the human mind in terms of interactions and attributes of electrical and chemical signals, in sets, which are conceptually obtainable in clusters of neurons.
It is possible to use these to display disorders, including some as simple as dynamic flowcharts. It could be used to measure risk level as well as appropriate extents of therapy, and so forth. The effectiveness of 988 foreshadows the applicability of this to good psychiatry, not the status quo and anti-psychiatry.
There are limited options for psychiatry to progress beyond electrical and chemical signals. It is a huge disappointment that Psychiatric Times, MJH Life Sciences, and John J. Miller, MD, abandoned exploration.
This article was written for WHN by David Stephen, who currently does research in conceptual brain science with a focus on the electrical and chemical signals for how they mechanize the human mind, with implications for mental health, disorders, neurotechnology, consciousness, learning, artificial intelligence, and nurture. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona.
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