If you’re thinking about suicide right now, or you’re worried about someone who is, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. It’s free, it’s confidential, and someone is there 24 hours a day. Text and chat are available in Spanish, and there are options for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.

Save this page before you need it. The night you do need it, you won’t want to be searching. Below are the crisis lines that serve Texas, taken from each service’s own website, with the number, the text keyword, and who each one is for. After the numbers come the questions people ask us once the immediate danger has passed: whether it’s safe to ask someone directly, what reduces the risk in the weeks that follow, and where treatment fits in. If you need a number right now, it’s in the first list, and the rest can wait.

Contact North Texas DBT Associates

The short answers

Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org, any hour. Free and confidential. Text and chat in Spanish, and a Deaf and hard of hearing option.
Veterans, service members, and the people who support them: dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255. You don’t have to be enrolled in VA care.
If you’d rather text than talk: text HOME to 741741, or HOLA for Spanish.
LGBTQ+ young people: call 1-866-488-7386, or text START to 678-678.
If someone is in immediate danger, or has already hurt themselves, call 911.
Asking someone directly whether they’re thinking about suicide does not increase suicidal thoughts, and may reduce them.
A written safety plan plus follow-up calls was linked to 45 percent fewer suicidal behaviors over six months, and more than double the odds of getting to an outpatient appointment.

Who do I call if someone is suicidal right now?

Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is open every hour of every day, the conversation is free and confidential, and it’s for the person in crisis and for anyone worried about them. The Lifeline’s own page states that text and chat are available in Spanish and that there is a dedicated option for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.

If the person is in immediate physical danger, or has already done something to hurt themselves, call 911 instead, and then stay with them.

What if I’d rather text than talk?

Text 988, or text HOME to 741741. The 988 Lifeline takes texts on the same number as calls. Crisis Text Line is a separate service: text HOME to 741741, or HOLA for Spanish, and a trained volunteer crisis counselor replies. It’s free, confidential and open around the clock.

Is there a crisis line for veterans?

Yes. Dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255, or chat at veteranscrisisline.net. The Veterans Crisis Line serves veterans, service members, National Guard and Reserve members, and the people who support them, and its site states that you don’t have to be enrolled in VA benefits or health care to use it.

This line matters more in Texas than most people realize. The Texas Department of State Health Services counted 16,262 suicide deaths in the state between 2019 and 2022, and 2,274 of them, 14 percent, were people who had served in the military.

Is there a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people?

Yes. The Trevor Project runs a line for LGBTQ+ young people: call 1-866-488-7386, text START to 678-678, or chat on its site. It’s open 24 hours a day, every day, from anywhere in the United States, and the conversation is confidential.

Do people use 988?

Yes, and use is still growing. The Pew Charitable Trusts reported in July 2026 that since the line launched in July 2022 it has handled more than 23 million contacts: about 15 million calls, 4 million texts and 3 million chats. Contact volume increased 11.5 percent from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026. A crisis line that gets busier each year is one that people can find and are willing to use.

Should I ask someone directly whether they’re thinking about suicide?

Yes. The worry that asking will put the idea in someone’s head is common, and the published research doesn’t support it. A review in Psychological Medicine examined the studies that had tested this in adults and adolescents, in general and at-risk populations, and found none in which asking about suicidal thoughts produced a statistically significant increase in them. The authors concluded that acknowledging and talking about suicide may reduce suicidal ideation rather than increase it.

So use the plain words. “Are you thinking about suicide?” can be answered with a yes or a no. A hint can’t. Once you’ve asked, stay with the person, help them make the call rather than leaving them to do it alone, and don’t treat a calmer mood an hour later as the end of the episode.

What reduces the risk after a crisis?

Two things with evidence behind them: putting distance between the person and the means of harm, and leaving the crisis with a written plan and a follow-up call already arranged.

The CDC’s suicide prevention guidance describes putting space and time between a person and lethal means as part of preventing another attempt, and it’s specific about what that means at home: store firearms and prescription medications securely, in a gun safe or lock box, and don’t count putting them out of sight or out of reach as secure storage. Crises pass. The purpose of the lock box is to make sure the person is still here when this one does.

The second is the safety plan. In a study of 1,640 patients seen at nine Veterans Health Administration emergency departments, published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2018, patients at five of the hospitals left with a written Safety Planning Intervention, a short, prioritized list of their own coping strategies and contacts, and then received at least two follow-up phone calls. Over the next six months, 3.03 percent of them engaged in suicidal behavior, against 5.29 percent of patients who received usual care at the other four hospitals, which the authors report as 45 percent fewer suicidal behaviors. The safety plan group also had more than double the odds of attending at least one outpatient mental health appointment. The study compared hospitals rather than randomizing patients, so it’s a cohort comparison rather than a randomized trial, and the authors describe it as a large-scale one.

That second result is the one to hold on to. The plan did more than reduce harm in the following months. It got people to the next appointment, which is where the longer work happens.

What happens after the crisis call?

The crisis line gets a person through the night. Treatment is what changes the months after it, and in Texas that step is the one most often missed. SAMHSA’s state estimates for 2023 and 2024 put Texas adults about level with the rest of the country on serious thoughts of suicide, 5.17 percent against 5.22 percent, and behind on treatment: 19.56 percent of Texas adults received any mental health treatment in the past year, against 22.90 percent nationally. The full comparison is in the first post in this series.

For someone who keeps returning to thoughts of suicide, the treatment with the most trial evidence behind it is Comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy. In the trial that tested it against expert therapists, people who got DBT were half as likely to make a suicide attempt over two years. What the trials found, study by study, is in the second post in this series.

Treatment for adults in Texas

North Texas DBT Associates provides Comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adults, by telehealth across Texas. The program has the four parts the trials tested: weekly individual therapy, a weekly skills group, 24/7 phone coaching between sessions, and clinicians who sit on a weekly DBT consultation team. Courtney Hicks is a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification Certified Clinician.

You can read about how Comprehensive DBT works, see the program, meet our clinicians, check where we work, and read our fees, including the sliding scale.

Contact North Texas DBT Associates, call (817) 214-7200, or email info@ntxdbt.com. If it’s urgent, don’t wait for a callback. Call or text 988.

The rest of this series

Three companion posts, written for Suicide Prevention Month 2026:

Suicide statistics for the United States and Texas: rates by sex, age and race, with sources.
Does DBT work for suicidal behavior?: what the randomized trials found.
Why evidence-based treatment for suicide matters: Comprehensive DBT against DBT-informed therapy.

Sources:

Every source above was opened and checked on 8 September 2026, and each figure was checked against its page again on 23 September 2026.