988 and Mobile Crisis Teams in New York: What Happens, and What It Costs

What happens when you contact 988

You hear a short greeting and are given choices, including a line for veterans and a line in Spanish. Your contact is routed to a crisis center based on your area code, so in New York you generally reach New York counselors.

A trained behavioral health crisis counselor picks up. They listen, work out how the problem is affecting you, and help you find what comes next. There is no script you have to fit into and no threshold of severity you have to meet before you are allowed to call.

The number works three ways: call, text, or online chat. For someone who cannot speak freely at home or simply cannot talk, text and chat are not lesser options.

What it costs

Nothing. This is worth stating plainly because the assumption that everything in American health care produces a bill is a reasonable assumption most of the time, and it is wrong here.

• 988 itself: free, no insurance required, no bill afterward.
• A mobile crisis team visit: insurance is not required.
• An emergency room visit: billable like any other ER visit, though New York’s protections apply. What those are.
• A hospital admission: billable, and covered by insurance if you have it, and subject to the hospital financial assistance law if you do not.

Mobile crisis teams

A mobile crisis team is a group of health professionals, typically including nurses, social workers and psychiatrists, who provide mental health services where the person actually is, usually at home. They exist so that a crisis does not have to become an ambulance and an emergency room by default.

How you reach one. In most cases through 988. A counselor assesses the situation and, if the person is eligible for mobile crisis services, sends the referral to the appropriate team.

What it costs. You do not need insurance to be seen by a mobile crisis team.

What it is not. It is not instant, and it is not a substitute for 911 when someone is in immediate physical danger. It is the middle option that most people do not know exists, sitting between a phone call and an emergency room.

What to have ready, if there is time

None of this is required and nobody will refuse to help without it. It just makes the next step faster.

• The address where you are, if a team might come.
• The name of the person’s usual provider or clinic, if there is one.
• Medications currently taken, or a photo of the bottles.
• Anything already tried today.

Helping someone else

You can contact 988 about another person. Counselors take calls from family members, friends, neighbours and coworkers, and a large part of what they do is help the caller work out what is actually available.

Two things to keep in mind. You do not need to have the right words or a diagnosis; describing what you are seeing is enough. And you are allowed to ask what the options are without committing to any of them, which is the question most people are actually calling with.

After the crisis

The hardest part of the system is not the crisis line. It is the week after, when the acute moment has passed and an ongoing appointment is needed. That is a different problem with a different method, and it is worth starting on it while the referral from a crisis contact is still fresh, because a crisis service can often hand off directly to ongoing care.

How to find ongoing care that takes your insurance · What it costs without insurance