Experts: Call 988 when needed
Butler County’s Center for Community Resources regularly sees a decrease in crisis calls during difficult times.
“In the winter months, people tend to not really reach out — they isolate a little,” Katie Doerr, director of programs, said. “It concerns us — we have people we know who regularly reach out to us, and we haven’t heard from them.”
CCR has overseen the county’s 988 mental health hotline since its national launch in July 2022. For 16 years prior to that, CCR operated its own lifeline service, and the center has provided supportive services, referrals and information to the county since 2002.
Doerr explained that the center may now take calls from all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, as the 988 hotline connects callers with a network of local crisis centers. The centers can help callers find services for mental health, substance abuse, intellectual disabilities and more.
“We don’t provide that direct service — we don’t offer therapy, for example — but we connect them to someone who can,” Doerr said. “The idea of why (the center) was created was to be a single point of contact for people to come in and get connected to help.”
In spite of that, Doerr often finds that calls and walk-ins taper off when county residents need that help the most.
