This Longhorn’s Advocacy Helped to Launch the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
The doorbell rang around dinnertime on April 21, 2008, while Kristen Christy, BS ’89, Life Member, was on the phone with a friend. Her 14-year-old son, Ryan, answered it and then called out, “Mom, it’s some people in uniform.” Christy hung up and walked to the door, sensing the truth even before she saw the Air Force officer, Colorado Springs police officer, and coroner who stood on the porch. She asked her sons to wait inside while she stepped into the evening chill and learned that Don Christy, BBA ’90, Life Member, the father of her children and, until their divorce a few months earlier, her husband, had died that day by suicide in Colorado Springs.
A chaplain was on the way. So was the friend Christy had been talking to on the phone. Christy called a couple more friends and waited outside until everyone arrived. Somehow, she had to set aside her own grief long enough to deliver the news to Ryan and his 12-year-old brother, Ben. What words could possibly ease their pain? All she could think, over and over, was, My poor boys.
Seventeen years later, it’s still hard for Christy to describe that evening, but telling the story is part of her new mission. After her loss, Christy found a new identity as a suicide prevention advocate and resilience trainer. Her campaign for an easy-to-remember emergency hotline helped lead to the creation of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which has been used more than 16.5 million times since its launch in July 2022.
The hotline features in Christy’s dozens of speaking engagements each year to military and civilian audiences. She tells her listeners that suicide has a devastating impact on those left behind—but that, by building resilience, even those who’ve experienced tremendous loss can find meaning and motivation to move forward.
“I will never forget that night when we were notified,” Christy says. “But that has been the turning point to me finding my purpose … To tell our story, no matter how dark it seems, because I’m on the other side, and I can show them the light.”
Christy grew up in an Air Force family, an “uber-extrovert” who enjoyed the frequent moves and the challenge of making new friends. In high school in Wiesbaden, Germany, where her father was stationed, she excelled at tennis and golf and planned to compete in varsity athletics in college. Nine days before her 16th birthday, she had a massive stroke, the result of a previously undiagnosed congenital abnormality, and those dreams were sidelined. Military families overseas declare a state of legal residence, and because Christy’s family had chosen Texas after a previous posting in San Antonio, she applied to Texas public universities, where she’d qualify for resident tuition. After 18 months of learning to crawl, then walk with a cane, she was able to cross the stage at graduation unaided and receive her high school diploma.
At UT she majored in organizational communication and joined Angel Flight, now called Silver Wings, a civic and service organization that worked in tandem with the Air Force ROTC. Her junior year, she met a handsome Air Force ROTC cadet.
“Hi, I’m Kristen Andersen,” she introduced herself. “I’m Don Christy,” he replied, and added, with characteristic dry humor, “We could never get married, because then you would be Kristen Christy.” After graduating from the school then known as DeVry Institute of Technology, Don was earning a bachelor’s degree in business from UT. He was technically oriented and could be quiet, but he would surprise people with a humorous remark that made everyone laugh, his mother, Diane Christy, says. “He was very honest and loyal and extremely compassionate. He was also very responsible and reliable. He was well loved. Don was a good person,” she says. Contrary to his initial quip, Don and Kristen married in May 1990, a week after Don graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force.
The Christys embarked on the itinerant life of a military family, with stints in North Dakota and Colorado Springs, and had two sons. Don was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Then, in 2004, during the war in Iraq, he was deployed to Baghdad, where he was deputy commander at the airport. In those days before video calls, Kristen and the boys communicated with him via email. Don would share stories about meeting dignitaries and USO performers (one time, he wrote, country music star Toby Keith took a nap on his couch). But he didn’t say much about his work. After a few months, Don came home, “and he came home different,” Christy says.
She later learned that one part of his deployment was coordinating the repatriation of remains of service members killed in the line of duty, a responsibility that could have weighed on him. Don was respected by his colleagues, his mother said, and he earned the Bronze Star, awarded for heroic or meritorious achievement or service while engaged in military action against an armed enemy. But Don and Kristen’s relationship was never the same after his return. Kristen noticed that he spent more time alone on the porch, and that his nails were bitten to the quick. The distance between them widened, and, five months before Don died, their divorce was final.
Two years after Don’s death, Christy woke up at 3 a.m.—which wasn’t unusual those days—with a thought: We have 911 for a medical emergency. Why don’t we have a three-digit number for suicide prevention? She knew that, since 2005, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK) had connected callers with trained counselors any time of day or night. But the 10-digit number was hard for a person in crisis to remember. They could dial 911, but a mental health emergency was different from a medical one, and not all first responders were well equipped to help with mental health calls. A three-digit number specific to suicide prevention seemed like a solution.
In 2010, Christy had returned to the professional world for the first time since her sons were born. She had joined a women’s organization and civic activities in Colorado Springs, and she began to mention her idea for a three-digit suicide hotline to friends and colleagues. They encouraged her to pursue her cause with elected officials. Christy didn’t consider herself political, but when she met U.S. Senator Mark Udall at an event, she shared her idea with him. After Cory Gardner won that Senate seat in 2014, she took up the cause with his office. It was an idea whose time had almost come: In 2018, Congress passed legislation requiring a feasibility study of a three-digit hotline. In 2019, Gardner introduced follow-up legislation requiring the FCC to designate 988 as the universal suicide and crisis hotline. The bill collected 34 co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle, was passed by Congress, and was signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2020. That February, Gardner invited Christy to attend the State of the Union address as his guest.
“It’s leadership from people like Kristen and so many others across Colorado who have highlighted the very big challenge we have” with veteran suicide, Gardner told CBS News at the time. “The stigma that Kristen talked about is something we have to eliminate. We’ve got to fight through and find ways to help.”
The three-digit hotline went live in July 2022 (the 10-digit number still works, too). When someone calls the lifeline, they are greeted by a short, recorded message, followed by three options. Veterans can press 1 to reach a dedicated military and veteran crisis line. Spanish speakers choose option 2. Young people who identify as part of the LGBTQI+ community can choose option 3. In Washington State, a fourth option, called the Native and Strong Lifeline, is designed for Native callers who want to speak with a counselor from a Native background. If the person doesn’t choose any of these options, their call is routed to the nearest regional call center (and if a crisis counselor isn’t available there, the call is transferred to a center where someone is). All calls are free and can be anonymous.
Since 2005, when the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration launched the 10-digit hotline, SAMHSA has administered the line through a cooperative agreement with Vibrant Emotional Health, a nonprofit with expertise in crisis service delivery. Vibrant coordinates the work of 200 crisis call centers across the country that all receive calls from a particular geographic region. Texas is served by five such centers, each covering a broad swath of the state. Callers in Central Texas are routed to a crisis counselor at Integral Care, the Travis County mental health authority. Those roughly 60 counselors, all of whom have degrees in a mental health-related field, listen empathetically, ask questions, and can help the caller make a safety plan. This might involve asking a friend to come over until the crisis has passed, turning over their weapon or pills to someone else, and making a counseling appointment. The counselors also can connect callers to additional services, such as ongoing therapy or a place they can stay temporarily to make sure they’re safe.
Callers sometimes say they have imminent plans to harm themselves, and in extremely rare cases, Integral Care has dispatched an emergency team to the caller’s stated location. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, “The intervention is the call itself,” says practice administrator Nicole Warren, who also has worked as a crisis counselor. “People just need someone to listen. They need someone to be with them and share that space with them, to get through that difficult time.”
The three-digit number has made a difference: From 988’s launch in July 2022 until November 2024, the lifeline saw a 52 percent increase in interactions (calls, texts, and chats). Texas call centers took more than 382,000 calls in the new hotline’s first two years. But Texas is completely reliant on federal grants to support its 988 operations, which worries staff at the National Alliance on Mental Illness Texas. Federal grants can be revoked or reduced. Counting on state lawmakers to appropriate enough money for the hotline every two years carries similar risks, especially as the volume of calls continues to increase.
Instead, NAMI Texas recommends emulating the 10 states that have patterned their 988 funding after 911 fees and added a small charge to phone bills—anywhere between 12 and 72 cents—to pay for their call centers. In this year’s legislative session, NAMI Texas supported a bill filed by State Sen. José Menéndez of San Antonio to create a state trust fund supported by such a surcharge, which would ensure the lifeline was adequately funded regardless of the priorities of the state or federal government.
“We think that this is a sustainable model,” says NAMI Texas peer policy fellow Christine Busse. “It’s the best path forward and would not require redoing it every single budget cycle. We would be happy with even five cents.”
Funding is not the hotline’s only challenge. Most polls find that only 20 to 30 percent of adults say they are familiar with 988, more than two years after its launch. Many respondents who have heard of 988 say they’re not sure when a person should call it.
You don’t have to be in acute crisis to call the lifeline, Warren says. It’s OK to call about a friend or colleague whose behavior concerns you. You can even do a test call to make the lifeline feel less intimidating: Call 988, listen to the prompts, and tell the person who answers that you’re just making a test call for practice.
“When in doubt,” Warren says, “give us a call.”
Christy remarried in 2014, and her husband, Sean Lange, an Air Force reservist, nominated her in 2018 for Air Force Spouse of the Year. When she won, the honor gave her a platform to speak about suicide prevention, and that fall, she shared her story at the Air Force Association conference. The crowd gave her an enthusiastic ovation, and Christy knew she’d found her calling. Since then, she has given more than 350 talks and interviews to audiences totaling about 400,000 in five countries.
This fall, she will address students at the Cockrell School of Engineering as part of the wellness speaker series supported by the Bryni’s Love Foundation, established by Marla Howard in memory of her daughter, Bryn Christine Howard, ’17. Christy is “so much more than her tragedy,” Howard says. “Her resilience and hopefulness come across when you talk to her. She’s turned it into something that is helping other people.”
At every talk, Christy distributes materials about 988 and makes sure a counselor or chaplain is present for attendees who have a strong emotional response. Some of those people have later texted her at the number on her business card. One military audience member texted her that, after her talk, he summoned the courage to ask his commander for a referral to mental health resources. Another time, a civilian sent her a note: “Remember how you said you wanted your message to resonate with one person yesterday? I was your one. I was planning on ending it all last night, and I’m going to get help.”
During another of her talks, a man stood up and walked out. On the way, he handed the chaplain in the back of the room the note he had written in anticipation of ending his life that night. He later told Christy about the difference her speech had made. He had gotten support and was doing much better.
“When my brain gets in my way—when I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing—I look at those notes,” Christy says. “I say, ‘OK, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.’”
Get help
Call or text 988
Chat on chat.988lifeline.org
For the deaf and hard-of-hearing, 988lifeline.org offers a video call option.
Help a friend
Practice ACE: Ask, Care, Escort. If you sense that your friend is deeply depressed or in crisis, ask if they’re thinking of suicide. Don’t worry that you’re giving them the idea. What you’re giving them is a chance to be honest about their feelings. Then care: Listen to your friend. Help them plan for their safety by removing any means of self-harm. Finally, escort your friend to additional help, such as their counselor or faith leader, the ER, or a crisis facility. 988 counselors can help you figure out how to approach your friend and connect you with local resources.
CREDIT: Courtesy of Kristen Christy (2)
