LGBTQ+ youth have lost a lifeline. What now?

If you or a loved one are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 74174.

When Arden was 16, they called a suicide crisis hotline “thinking their life was over.”

They were in an abusive relationship, regularly self-harming, and felt that nothing was helping. “It was terrifying,” they told Uncloseted Media.

“If it weren’t for the hotline, I would have killed myself.”

Since that day, Arden, now 24 years old and living in Brooklyn, has used various crisis helplines. When the 988 national suicide prevention hotline launched a “Press 3” option in 2022 for LGBTQ+ youth, they immediately started using the resource.

Arden, who identifies as nonbinary, says the LGBTQ+ hotline workers “respected their identity” and were understanding that they are not a woman. “It was really affirming for a very troubling time in my life.”

Since then, Arden has “Pressed 3” more times than they can remember, seeking help for everything from dealing with the loss of their friend, who died by suicide, to “stupid cliquey gay people stuff.”

“I remember when my friend had killed himself and I was dealing with a lot. I called them and they talked to me for over an hour because I was really upset,” they say. “When I called the hotline, it was a last resort. I was really at my wits’ end.”

Arden — whose last call to the lifeline was two weeks ago — is one of 1.3 million callers and chatters the LGBTQ+ youth hotline has served since it launched, according to federal data. The legislation that greenlit the national program, signed by Trump in 2020 during his first term, explicitly recognized that LGBTQ+ youth are more than “4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide.”

This new option to “Press 3” allowed queer youth in crisis the ability to directly connect with counselors from a set of specialized LGBTQ+ crisis centers. These counselors are trained in cultural competency and often bring lived experience, providing identity‑affirming, empathetic support for challenges like coming out, discrimination or mental health crises.

Despite the hotline’s success, the Trump administration announced last month that they would be shutting it down on July 17, claiming that the service had run out of congressionally directed funding. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said in an email to Uncloseted Media that “continued funding of the Press 3 option threatened to put the entire 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in danger of massive reductions in service.”

There are no plans, however, to shut down the other hotline options, including the Veterans Crisis Line, the Spanish Language Line and the Native and Strong Lifeline. And while Congress spent $33 million on the LGBTQ+ service last year, the cost of continuing it represents merely 0.006 percent of the $510 billion that suicide and self-harm costs the U.S. yearly.

“This is absolutely a mistake,” a suicide prevention call center director told Uncloseted Media. “We are concerned that this will result in increased suicide rates for LGBTQ+ youth.”

Why we need option 3

The director’s concern is supported by a 2022 research brief that found that queer college students with access to LGBTQ-specific services were 44% less likely to attempt suicide than those without it. Research also shows that a hotline specific to LGBTQ+ services increases the likelihood of queer youth calling.

“It’s true for any direct service,” Harmony Rhoades, associate research professor of sociology at Washington University, told Uncloseted Media. “People who are in substance use recovery want to work with people who’ve gone through recovery themselves because they understand what that experience is. Culturally, there is not a lot of understanding of the specific experiences of someone who is LGBTQ+ and without specific training, a crisis counselor isn’t going to be able to know the language that’s going to feel affirming.”

“Connecting with someone who gets it was really helpful. … Because at home, I was so isolated and I didn’t really interact with other queer people,” says Genna Brown, who used the Trevor Project’s chat function at 10 years old.

“I was an extremely self-loathing, suicidal kid who was under the impression that God hated me and I was gonna burn in hell for eternity,” Brown, now 15 and living in High Point, North Carolina, told Uncloseted Media.

“I only used the chat feature because I was scared my parents would hear me. We shared a wall,” she says. “I was spiraling really bad. I’d just realized I was crushing on girls, and I thought I was going to burn in hell for all eternity because that is what we are taught.”

Raised in a Southern Baptist church, Brown never felt safe at home, where her father would regularly spit slurs like “faggots” and “queers.” At church, every sermon was about Sodom and Gomorrah or about how “real love” only existed between a man and a woman.

“I grew up knowing the number one thing not to be was one of the ‘dirty queers,’” she says. “I kept thinking, I can kill myself now and go to hell, or live longer and still go to hell. I used to have panic attacks at 9, 10 years old, just thinking about burning in hell perpetually.”

Brown remembers Caitlin, the chat counselor who helped her, being the first ever to tell her that queer love was valid.

“She told me she’d been with her girlfriend for seven years. I didn’t even believe queer people could be happy. … It broke my brain in the best possible way,” says Brown, who is now out and proud to her parents, who have come around, and to most of her friends on social media.

Arden had a similar experience. “The queer line is better than the regular line,” they say. “I feel like it’s less like going through a checklist on the queer line.”

As a survivor of sexual assault, Arden says knowing that the counselors on the other line were trained in LGBTQ-specific trauma made it easier to reach out for help. “My voice doesn’t pass per se but they still respected my identity,” they say.

LGBTQ-specific resources for youth are critical, with 41 percent seriously considering suicide in 2024. In addition, queer youth are disproportionately affected by a litany of mental health issues and trauma, including physical and sexual assault, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, bullying and addiction.

“It’s not like we’re cherry-picking some random group,” says Rhoades. “If we are going to fund [suicide prevention], there is no reason we should do it inefficiently by not effectively targeting the people who need it most. So yes, they need specific suicide prevention services.”

While the hotline focuses on LGBTQ+ youth, they don’t turn away adults who need help. Joshua Dial, 36, says that when he called 988, he was often connected to the LGBTQ+ youth hotline after mentioning that he’s gay.

“I always walked away feeling better after I called,” he says. “There have been times when I spoke to the regular 988 crisis people, and they helped too. But they didn’t understand quite as much.”

Dial, a Lutheran who lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, says he wasn’t always comfortable being open about his sexual orientation to his religious community and that the only way to meet other gay people was on hook-up and dating apps, which he notes are “not for emotional support.”

“I wouldn’t be talking to my pastor about getting on Grindr. I can’t go to my pastor and tell them what I did last weekend,” he says.

Dial, who was raised to believe that homosexuality is a sin, has experienced depression since the age of 16 and has also struggled with bipolar disorder, addiction and PTSD. “My addiction was getting worse, and the only constant was that the line was always available,” he says. “I didn’t have any other options, but I knew that if I called the hotline, I would get help.”

Dial says the emotional support he received through these phone calls kept him from self-harm and suicide. “There are times when I called that number and was this close to taking a handful of pills, this close to slitting my wrist, this close to buying a gun to shoot myself. And I talked to those people, and they not only understood, but they gave me the empowerment of knowing that someone had my back.”

How cutting option 3 affects the whole system

While the cuts are only meant to affect the hotline’s support for LGBTQ+ youth, crisis center employees say they’ll impact the entire 988 network.

“This being rifted does very much mean less capacity for 988 as a whole,” says the suicide prevention call center director. “Everyone will be affected.”

“When the LGBTQ+ hotline opened up, it really lowered the volume on the mainstream counselors,” a 988 hotline counselor in Washington state told Uncloseted Media. “It seemed really helpful, and I didn’t get a lot of LGBTQ+ chats after that point.”

The counselor at the Washington state center says they are about to lay off 42 counselors from their LGBTQ+ hotline. They say these roles won’t be replaced on the main 988 line due to a hiring freeze. Because of this, counselors expect the number of calls they receive to double, which could dramatically increase wait times. The Washington state center did not respond to a request for comment.

Even without the cuts, wait times are an issue. A 17-year-old caller from Virginia says that even the 10 minutes they had to wait for their call to be answered were painful. “I was worried that nobody would want to talk to me. I was just feeling hopeless,” they say. “There’s this one resource that I’m supposed to be able to have access to 24/7, but it just isn’t as accessible as it should be. For some people, those 10 minutes are crucial.”

In a 2009 study of 82 patients referred to a psychiatric university hospital after a suicide attempt, nearly half reported that the period between their first thought of suicide and their actual attempt had lasted 10 minutes or less, underscoring how shorter wait times can be a matter of life and death.

“If we are not able to catch someone during the time that suicidal thoughts have appeared and intervene as quickly as possible, they could start figuring out how they’re going to kill themselves and make it happen,” says the suicide prevention call center director. “And a lot of folks have access to means that can result in instant death like firearms.”

What can be done?

With the “Press 3” option gone, Rhoades worries that the current spate of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and hateful rhetoric toward the community will affect how counselors without queer-specific training will provide care.

“We’re living in an unprecedented time where anti-LGBTQ+ hatred is being normalized,” she says. “It absolutely affects how young people are treated. And it filters down to crisis counselors.”

As Congress and the Trump administration prepare to shut down “Press 3” on July 17 in an effort to save money, many believe that it will have the reverse effect.

“They just want these people to die. … That’s the message I got,” says a hotline operator in Washington state, adding that the administration is “not looking at the bigger picture.”

Representatives and advocates are fighting for more LGBTQ+ mental health services. Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids reintroduced a bill last month dedicated to LGBTQ+ mental health resources. “By increasing access to mental health support for our children and teens, we can save lives,” Davids said in a press release. And last weekend, hundreds of people protested in front of Trump Tower in an effort to save the hotline.

Arden says they wouldn’t be here today without the line’s support. “I’ve been struggling for a long time in my life [with] self-harm and I’ve been clean almost two years now,” they say. “I would definitely not be clean if it weren’t for the hotline and I would probably hurt myself again.”