Canada’s 988 Crisis Hotline, a ‘Pathway to Survival,’ One Year Later

American rapper Logic did something a little different in his hit song about mental health struggles. Instead of naming the song, he assigned it an 11-digit National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number.

Logic (real name Bobby Hall) released the song in 2017, performing it at the MTV Video Music Awards and later at the Grammy Awards. One study found that for about a month following each of these three moments, calls to hotlines increased and suicides decreased. study Published in the British Medical Journal in 2021.

Exerting large-scale influence over people in crisis to solicit help is an example of what researchers call the Papageno effect, which is similar to how characters in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute cope with suffering. It was named after the man who discovered a way to stay alive.

In some cases, it is important to simplify where to seek help in moments of extreme distress.

The phone number in Canada is 988.

The hotline was introduced last November, about a year after the United States adopted the same number.