On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved motion by Supervisor Janice Hahn to proclaim September as National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month in Los Angeles County, directing the departments of Public Health and Mental Health to increase awareness of suicide prevention resources, including the 9-8-8 Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Line, Teen Line, the Trevor Project LGBTQ+ Suicide Hotline and California Dept. of Public Health’s Never a Bother Campaign.  

“Suicide touches every community in Los Angeles County, so we need to be raising awareness about these lifesaving resources as widely and thoroughly as possible,” said Hahn. “We’ve poured resources into beefing up our crisis response capacity precisely because we know that they can mean the difference between life and death, so we have to be equally committed to ensuring that everyone knows they’re there if and when someone needs them.”

Hahn’s motion also proclaimed Tuesday, Sept. 8 as 988 Day. 988 is a crisis hotline that anyone can call or text to immediately connect with a trained crisis counselor. Under Hahn’s leadership, Los Angeles County has become one of the few counties in the nation that has ensured 9-8-8 calls requiring an in-person response can be connected to mobile crisis response teams that operate 24/7, instead of to armed law enforcement. The County has recently increased the number of these mobile crisis response teams to 75, with six more in progress. 

Suicide accounted for 776 deaths in Los Angeles County in 2024, with youth specifically accounting for about 10% of suicide deaths, 33% of self-harm hospitalizations, and 49% of self-harm emergency department visits.