September 5^th:
We are working together with the SAMHSA to support 1-800-SUICIDE. They have agreed to pay all the telephone costs through the end of September. KBHC has agreed to donate the line to the SAMHSA.

August 25^th:
The Kristin Brooks Hope Center and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) have reached an agreement that will allow 1-800-SUICIDE to remain open and continue to be answered. Additional information will be forthcoming. All parties are grateful to the field for their ongoing support.

To help support the Kristin Brooks Hope Center, founders of 1-800-SUICIDE, and keep its other hotlines and programs operational and retire its debt to the phone companies, please make a donation. Please remember that every dollar counts. While we have agreed to donate the number to keep 1-800-SUICIDE operational that donation cannot be completed until our telephone bill is paid 100%.

KBHC's Current Programs (8/25/2006)

Thank you for taking the time and responding to save1800suicide.org's call to action. Our voices were heard by the press, the blogs, Congress, and most importantly the federal government. With your help in the 11th hour, our month long campaign worked and we have reached an agreement and will finally get our governement grant funding reviewed.

This is a huge relief to the Kristin Brooks Hope Center and their lawyers that have been working on trying to get this federal government claim reviewed and processed on for over 2 years -

We can not thank everyone enough who took time over the last month and contributed to our effort. We sincerely appreciate your tireless efforts contacting the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration and asking them to properly adjudicate our claim.

As a result of our agreement, the Kristin Brooks Hope Center will be able to continue to provide help and hope through the Youth America Hotline (YAH!) And the other specialty hotlines it created.

However, KBHC agreed to donate 1-800-SUICIDE to the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, an agency within the Health and Human Services Agency.

We will work to assure the public that the line will still remain confidential and will advocate for the privacy rights of callers and the crisis centers that take those calls. Without your support, letters, petitions and donations we could not have made this transition happen.

The purpose of the donation was to preserve not only 1-800-SUICIDE as a resource for all Americans, but also to preserve the KBHCs 19 other hotlines which combined receive over 24,000 calls a year. The 1-800-SUICIDE hotline continues to receive over 400,000 calls a year. In the 8 years 1-800-SUICIDE has been operational KBHC routed 2,012,072 callers up to the day it turned over responsibility to the government for maintaining the line for the good of the American public.

The decision to donate the line to the federal government was not an easy one.

We will report back to you after the claim is reviewed and processed to let you know the outcomes. If the review is not fair and balanced, and or fails to follow the OMB rules we will note that as well and ask that you bring additional pressure onto this agency.

As KBHC has over 15 separate programs, our survival as an independent agency is very important to many underserved population groups. The greatest need lies in the area of peer counseling lines such as the Teen-to-Teen Youth America Hotline 1-877-YOUTHLINE and the new veterans PTSD 1-877-Vet-2-Vet hotline.

The work and cost of supporting 1-800-SUICIDE consumed our agency and prevented us from addressing these, as well as other key and critically underserved populations.

The KBHC has demonstrated and committed many years of service to people in crisis everywhere: Building now on this foundation of having helped over 2 million callers in its first 8 years, KBHC looks forward now to exceeding even this extraordinary level of service.

Best always,

Reese Butler
President and Founder

Scott Goodstein
Organizer of http://www.save1800suicide.org/

P.S. - Special Thanks to www.postsecret.com, www.cmj.com, www.punknews.org, www.republicoft.com, www.taylormarsh.com, www.riseagainst.com, www.theakas.com & www.dailykos.com for all going above and beyond!