Political Quotes

“My amendment would allocate funds for a feasibility study on the adoption of geolocation for the Suicide Lifeline. Suicide is a leading cause of death across all groups. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported the age-adjusted suicide rate had increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017. In 2017, the last year for which we have statistics, 47,000 Americans took their own life. The Suicide Lifeline is a one-stop, anonymous, toll-free means for any person in the United States who is in emotional distress, who is thinking about killing themselves, to be connected to a trained counselor for assistance at anytime, anywhere in the U.S. The Lifeline routes calls to a network of certified local crisis centers. In northern Virginia, it will call somebody in northern Virginia. They can then intervene with support and link them to the resources they need: mental health, social services, sometimes police, sometimes emergency rooms. Last year, 2 million people used the Lifeline, and we are tracking 2.5 million in 2019. What is relevant now is that 80 percent of callers are using their cellphones, not their land lines. The Lifeline network routes the call based on the area code. If it is a northern Virginia area code, it is going to send it to a northern Virginia call center. The problem with wireless devices, as we all know, is that people are moving all the time and, often, their cellphone follows them.…”