How you can get help

MERIDIAN, ID – Late one night last November, a 15-year-old from Meridian said he was in serious need of someone to talk to. He called the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline.

Meridian High School freshman Jace Woods said while he wasn’t yet in an active crisis, he sought out the hotline for help, but, as a minor under 18 who didn’t have parental consent to get treatment, the hotline operator told him they had to end the call.

Nearly two years after the Idaho Legislature passed a law requiring parental consent for almost any medical intervention, young Idahoans like Woods are still feeling the unintended consequences. He’s now trying to change that.

“It’s just about the most terrifying thing that a person can do, to go and tell your parents that you want to die, that you hate yourself so much, that you are in such mental torture, that you want to die,” Woods said. “… most are too afraid to do it.”

Woods said his own parents are supportive, and when they found out he had called the hotline, they immediately enrolled him in therapy. But he was still afraid to tell them he was struggling, and knows others who aren’t in such supportive family environments, including those with parents or guardians who don’t believe in mental health care or therapy.

Woods said knows multiple people who had their calls to the 988 hotline end because of the parental consent law, created in Senate Bill 1329. Hotline Director Lee Flinn told the Idaho Capital Sun that the language in the law hampered operators’ ability to offer support to certain young people.

The bill has narrow exceptions for emergencies. Hotline operators are trained to do a safety assessment for every caller, Flinn said. If that caller is a minor who can’t get parental consent, and they are not at “imminent” risk of death or hurting someone else, the operators are trained to explain the law and “gently wind down the call,” Flinn said in an interview Wednesday.

“At that point we have to support them within the constraints of the law,” she said.

If they are at imminent risk of death, the call may continue. If not, it has to end unless a parent or guardian can step in and provide consent, she said. The bill also prevents the hotline from doing a follow-up call, which is best practice in suicide prevention, Flinn said.

Since January, Woods has been trying to contact lawmakers to urge them to fix the law.

Bill sponsors say bill to clarify law will be introduced this year

Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, sponsored SB 1329 in 2024, along with Senate President Pro Tempore Kelly Anthon, R-Rupert.

Ehardt told the Sun Tuesday she’s nearing completion of a final draft of a bill to add clarifying language to the law. She said the clarification will include more guidance for 988, as well as other clarifications from issues that have arisen since its passage.

Anthon during the 2025 session sponsored a bill that added clarification language to the law, including a carve out for the suicide hotline. His bill passed the Senate but stalled in the House.

He told the Sun in a text message Tuesday, “A clarifying bill will be advanced this year.” He said because it failed to advance out of the House last year, Ehardt would introduce the bill on the House side of the rotunda this year.

Ehardt said she was still awaiting feedback on the new draft, but a proposed bill could come within “days.”

The Legislature is 38 days into the 2026 legislative session, which is expected to last until late March. The deadline for introduction of new bills was Monday, but new bills may still be introduced in “privileged committees” until the end of the session. House privileged committees are the Appropriations, Education, Health and Welfare, Revenue and Taxation, and Ways and Means committees.

Multiple concerns raised about language in Idaho law since it was introduced

When passed, the law superseded previous exceptions for parental consent needed for most medical care. Previously, teenagers could consent to their own care in particular circumstances, such as for sexually transmitted infections, substance use disorder treatment and some mental health treatment.

Proponents said it bolsters parents’ rights to direct their children’s medical care.

It provides narrow exemptions to provide care with consent in emergency situations where death or “irreparable physical” injury is imminent or parents couldn’t be reached and the child’s life or health is “seriously endangered.”

When SB 1329 was first debated in the Legislature in 2024, it immediately sparked concern from children’s advocates that it may have a “chilling effect” for young people getting certain types of care, such as for mental health, the Idaho Press reported at the time.

Idaho’s parental consent law prohibits minors from accessing rape kit exams without parents

Gov. Brad Little signed the bill March 21, 2024, but wrote a letter urging stakeholders to “closely monitor any negative consequences this legislation has on our youth accessing the behavioral health supports they need.”

“In the event this bill creates any unintended barriers for adolescent behavioral health care, I expect amendments will be made to address the issue accordinging,” Little wrote.

Upon the law going into effect, a provider with Idaho State Police raised alarms that it could inhibit sexual assault, or rape kit, exams on minor children when the perpetrator’s is a parent, family member or close family friend, Idaho Reports reported.

There is an exemption in the law for if the parent is the subject to an active investigation of a crime against the child. However, those investigations may take time to initiate, Sexual Assault Nurse Coordinator Deb Wetherelt told Idaho Reports, which can further complicate the timing of doing the kit before DNA evidence is gone.

The Boise School District in response to the law in 2024 asked parents and guardians for blanket permission to perform basic first aid on children, such as giving a Band-Aid, Idaho Education News reported.

Ehardt on Tuesday said it was not the intention to impede suicide or crisis care, sexual assault investigations or providing Band-Aids. She said those situations will all be clarified in the new bill.

Woods said his focus is on the hotline issue. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, suicide is the second leading cause of death of youth people age 15 to 24.

“At my school, it’s 988 printed on everything, because we’re in this weird point where we can’t be kids anymore,” Woods said. “… we go from having very basic, very easy lives into this really chaotic point where we have to do 1,000 things all at once, and we have to have all these experiences and we have to do all these things, and all while we have the most crazy hormones.”

“It’s a lot for a lot of people,” he said. “And everyone ends up being not able to take all that stress, and I think everyone breaks some. Some people are just better at it than others, but everyone has days where they feel not mentally healthy. And all it really takes is one day where you feel really, really bad, and that’s the difference between being alive and being dead the next day.”

Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.