If you need help right now
Call 911 if someone is unresponsive or badly hurt. Call or text 988 for thoughts of suicide or self-harm, at any hour, including about someone else. If eating is the concern, the National Alliance for Eating Disorders answers on 866-662-1235 on weekdays. All of these are free, and none of them require you to have decided how serious it is.
Immediate help
Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988. Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741. If there is immediate danger, call 911.
What happens when you call 988
A person answers. They ask what is going on, in ordinary language, and they let you talk. There is no script you have to follow and no threshold you have to meet before you are allowed to be worried.
You can call about your child rather than yourself. Many people do. You do not need your child’s permission and you do not need them in the room.
Most calls end with a conversation and a plan. Emergency services are involved in a minority of them, and the counselor will talk that through with you rather than spring it on you.
While you are waiting
If your child is with you and in distress, staying is the thing that helps. You do not have to say anything useful. Sitting in the same room, not leaving, and not filling the silence is enough, and it is more than it sounds like.
Ask directly whether they are thinking about hurting themselves. Asking does not put the idea there. A young person who says yes has just told you something enormously hard, and the response that helps is calm rather than alarm.
If there is a specific means in the house that you are worried about, put distance between it and them, quietly, without announcing it as a measure.
If they will not talk to you
Some young people will not speak to a parent about this and will speak to almost anyone else. That is not a failure on your part and it is very common.
Crisis Text Line, at 741741, is text rather than voice, which some teenagers find far easier. It is worth putting the number in their phone yourself rather than telling them to save it.
A school counselor, a family doctor, an aunt, a coach, an older cousin: any adult they will actually talk to is a route. The goal is that someone is in contact, not that it is you.
For you, not only for them
Parents in this position often go weeks without telling anyone. The lines above will talk to you about your own situation, and so will your own doctor.
This matters practically rather than sentimentally. A parent who has not slept and has told nobody makes worse decisions, and this is a stretch that can run for months.
Where to get help
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911Emergency, 24 hours
If someone is unresponsive, badly hurt, or in immediate danger.
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988 Suicide and Crisis LifelineCrisis, 24 hours
For thoughts of suicide or self-harm, for you or for someone else. Free, and you do not need to have decided how serious it is.
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Crisis Text LineCrisis, 24 hours, text only
Text rather than voice, which some young people find far easier. Worth putting in their phone yourself.
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National Alliance for Eating DisordersEating disorders, weekdays
Staffed by clinicians. The one to call before deciding whether the concern is serious enough, rather than after.