By Nausicaa Chu
It can be 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. You can be 19 or 90. You can be grieving a loved one or stressed over homework. No matter what time it is, who you are or what you want to talk about, one Birmingham phone number—205-323-7777—will always pick up.
That phone number is the Birmingham Crisis Center’s Crisis and Suicide Line, which offers support to callers facing mental health struggles. The line received 7,848 calls in 2024 alone. And it is just one part of the Crisis Center’s efforts to bolster mental health care in the Greater Birmingham area.
The Crisis Center encompasses eight programs, including a Sexual Assault Resource Center, Recovery Resource Center and senior and youth talk lines. In a single day, the center might help a person addicted to drugs find housing, manage social security income for people with severe mental illnesses or help a young student process family conflict.
The Crisis Center’s founders “saw the gaps, the cracks that people were slipping through and wanted to be there as a source of extra support and care,” says Elizabeth Theriot, the organization’s Senior Communications Specialist. Alabama has an urgent need for mental health support. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 931,000 Alabama adults—over four times the population of Birmingham—have a serious mental illness, and 210,000 Alabama adults have serious thoughts of suicide each year. Despite the need for mental health care, however, almost 3,000,000 Alabamians live in areas without enough mental health professionals.
The Crisis Center faces an enormous demand for its services. In 2023, the Crisis Center answered 38 percent of calls directed to its chapter of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The center’s Senior Talk Line, where volunteers call seniors weekly to alleviate loneliness, has a waitlist. But thanks to an increase in volunteers and call specialists, the Crisis Center more than doubled its 988 answer rate to 78 percent in 2024. As for the Senior Talk Line, “100 percent of seniors who were interested were able to be matched with a volunteer,” says Theriot.
The center continues to expand. Last year, it launched a teen board to involve young people in its mental health awareness outreach. Beyond its programs, the center helps train police officers, emergency workers, and schools about how to provide better mental health care.
But mental health did not always have the support it now does. When a group of community leaders founded the Birmingham Crisis Center in 1970, a powerful stigma surrounded mental health. A “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality pervaded society. Asking for help could seem like a sign of weakness. The organization had little financial support and operated a single phone in the cramped basement of Birmingham City Hall.
Even though support for mental health has grown, that stigma remains an issue that the Crisis Center seeks to address. “It’s a thing that we’re trying to break down a little bit,” says Chris Suda, the center’s Crisis Services Coordinator. “It takes time, whether it’s just making sure people know we’re here, that it’s not going to be the police coming to your house or something. Because in a lot of people’s minds, people might call for the first time, and they’re concerned about things like that.”
Once a person calls, the center focuses on creating a supportive, judgement-free environment. “The main thing that we always want to emphasize in the line is to make sure they know it’s a safe place to talk. We’re not there to attack or to judge,” says Suda. “We make sure that they have the floor, and we listen to their story. We support them through it, whatever it might be.”
The simple presence of a listening ear can be enough to provide comfort. “Sometimes it’s not so much about finding an answer, but just to have a place to speak your mind and to vent some of that frustration or anger or sadness,” says Suda.
People respond to mental health struggles in different ways. At best, people will reach out for help, like those who call the Crisis and Suicide Line. But other times, people may turn to drugs or other substances to cope. The road to recovery can be complicated and overwhelming when faced alone. When Julia D., a woman in treatment for substance abuse, came to the organization’s Recovery Resource Center (RRC) in 2020, she had no house, no insurance and no cell phone. “I didn’t know what resources existed for someone like me,” she says in the center’s 2024 Annual Report.
The RRC provided her with support and referrals to other health providers. Now, five years later, she is sober and works as a peer specialist at the RRC, helping others with similar struggles. “I’m celebrating my long-term recovery with the same people who supported me in getting there, and I have the opportunity to support others like me,” she says.
Collectively, the Crisis Center’s programs provide thousands of calls, home visits, counseling sessions and treatment referrals in a year. But perhaps the organization’s greatest impact is one that numbers cannot quantify. A story that has stuck with Theriot is that of a client receiving sexual assault support. The client said her nurses and advocate were so kind, they made her comfortable enough to laugh. “You’re having the worst day of your life, and you have people who are there to support you,” says Theriot. “You can take away from that experience not just the trauma, but also the care and the love, and maybe you’ll even get to laugh.”
To donate to or volunteer at the Crisis Center, visit crisiscenterbham.org.
