GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — As the demand for mental health services rises, the Mental Health Foundation of West Michigan is working to make sure people know about all the resources they have access to.
Among those resources is the Crisis Text Line. The resource has been available to people for a decade now, but the foundation's "be nice" program recently developed a partnership with the service.
If you're in a mental health crisis, all you have to do is send a text saying "nice" to 741741. You'll be connected to a trained, volunteer crisis counselor who can help you. It's free, confidential and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The foundation will then receive information that will help it better serve people in West Michigan in the future.
"We'll be able to capture data that they collect. That's the demographics. That could be where they're from, their gender, what was going on in the situation that brought them to connect with the crisis line," said Christy Buckx, who serves as the foundation's executive director.
"We want to know that. Those are the risk factors. Those are the things that are going on in people's lives, that maybe now we're going to integrate more information about those into our presentations"
People who are dealing with a mental health crisis can also call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline simply by dialing 988.
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