Local Mental Health Crisis Calls Are Routed Outside LA (And Other Headlines)

What happens when you live in L.A. County, experience a mental health crisis and want local resources, but your area code is outside of the county or out-of-state?

Re-routing crisis calls

It turns out that calls to the national lifeline get routed to call centers based on area code. So, if you have a New York area code, you could end up talking with a counselor across the country. And that’s causing problems and headaches for 988, the national suicide and mental health crisis lifeline.

During the summer, my colleague Robert Garrova wrote a one-year update on the hotline. The hotline has been rethinking how to respond to psychiatric emergencies — with someone to call, someone to physically respond and somewhere to go. The out-of-county call routing is a “huge” issue challenging that work, according to Kyla Coates, the justice and mental health deputy for Supervisor Janice Hahn.

Learn more about what is being done to solve this problem — read the full story here.

Stay safe and cool, L.A. There’s more news below — just keep reading. 

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(After you stop hitting snooze)

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Wait... one more thing

Día de los Muertos celebrations

Wednesday, Nov. 1 marked the start of Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos, a celebration that’s popular in Latino cultures where people can remember their late loved ones and, according to the tradition, reunite with them.

In Boyle Heights, a community organization used this time to bring Latino and LGBTQ+ cultures together. Roughly 500 people showed up for the special Día de los Muertos gathering, the Latino Equality Alliance’s Calavera LGBTQ Festival, now in its 8th year.

Bunny Rosas, an HIV counselor, was there with VIA Care, a medical clinic based in East LA. But Rosas showed up for both work and personal reasons.

“I feel like it's really important to have spaces like these because a lot of us may not have any communication with our family due to our identity,” Rosas said. “I feel like a lot of times — well, at least in my own personal experience — I've had to grieve alone a lot.” Read the story here.

If you’re looking for a Día de los Muertos celebration, here’s a list of all the events happening in SoCal.

And if you want to learn more about the background and history of Día de los Muertos, like its history in L.A. or the meaning behind the beautiful, symbolic marigold flowers — or cempasúchi as the Aztecs named them — these How To LA episodes are a must-listen.