After three years and 1.3 million texts and phone calls, the national LGBTQ+ suicide prevention hotline is shutting down. The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it was ending LGBTQ+ services for 988, the crisis hotline for queer youth that launched in 2022.
“Everyone who contacts the 988 Lifeline will continue to receive access to skilled, caring, culturally competent crisis counselors who can help with suicidal, substance misuse, or mental health crises, or any other kind of emotional distress,” the administration said in an announcement. “Anyone who calls the Lifeline will continue to receive compassion and help.”
The statement does not specify why services specific to LGBTQ+ callers are ending.
LGBTQ+ rights organizations decried the news as a crushing blow to young queer Americans, many of whom are already suffering through increasingly hostile laws and policies.
“This is devastating, to say the least,” said Jaymes Black, CEO of the queer youth suicide prevention organization Trevor Project, in a statement. “Suicide prevention is about people, not politics. The administration’s decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible.”
The announcement came on the eve of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the United States vs. Skrmetti, in which the court upheld a Tennessee law barring gender-affirming care for transgender minors. The ruling is expected to bolster anti-transgender medical bans for youth in 25 states and risks undercutting constitutional protections for all transgender people.
Over the last five years, LGBTQ+ people have increasingly been the target of hostile policy and political attacks. Against that backdrop, the 988 hotline was praised as a lifeline for young people in desperate need of support. But the Trump administration’s moves to unravel diversity, equity and inclusion policies have undercut services for LGBTQ+ people broadly.
The Trevor Project, which staffs its own crisis line, worked with the federal government to field approximately 50 percent of the 988 calls. Six other providers also do that work. According to the Trevor Project, it served 231,000 crisis contacts last year alone.
The organization reports that LGBTQ+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their straight cisgender peers. According to their 2023 survey, roughly half of transgender and nonbinary youth had seriously considered suicide, and 41 percent of queer youth overall had.
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