Trump administration ends LGBTQ youth option on US suicide hotline

Part of a national American hotline for American suicide which is aimed at young LGBTQ says that it will close soon, after the Trump administration has reduced its funding.

The administration accused the service of “radical genre ideology”.

He indicates that it will always finance the widest 988 suicide & Crisis Lifeline – whose option of youth LGBTQ is a part – and that all the appellants will receive “compassion and aid”.

The Trevor project, an organization that has helped manage the LGBTQ option, said the decision would have a harmful impact on vulnerable young people.

“Suicide prevention concerns people, not politics,” said Jaymes Black, CEO of the organization. He said that his service had been invited to close within 30 days.

“The administration’s decision to remove bipartite service based on evidence that has effectively supported a high -risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible,” added Mr. Black.

The decision comes during the international month of pride, which celebrates LGBTQ culture and history.

The news also arrived before a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday which confirmed the ban on the state of Tennessee on health care linked to the transition for minors who identify as transgender.

The General 988 Lifeline offers free mental health support by call, SMS or cat. He is funded by the Toxicing Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa), a subsidiary of the US Health and Human Services Agency (HHS).

Currently, LGBTQ young people can select option 3 from a call menu to connect with the advisers.

After the changes, the remaining 988 LIFELINE services “would focus on the service of all help seekers”, including those who had previously chosen to access the LGBTQ youth services, said Samhsa.

But the hotline “would no longer be Silo LGB + Youth Services”, wrote Samhsa in a press release, omitting the “T” and “Q” which refer to transgender people and queer in the acronym LGBTQ.

HHS officials offered to cut the LGBTQ Youth Services 988 LGBTQ Youth Lifeline last week.

In a statement to NBC News at the time, an HHS spokesperson described the option as a “cat service where children are encouraged to adopt the radical gender ideology by” advisers “without consent or knowledge of their parents”.

The legislation adopted in 2020 by the US Congress required that the 988 LIFELINE provides services and staff specifically to LGBTQ persons as well as other risky groups such as rural people and Amerindians.

The legislation noted that young LGBTQs were “more than 4 times more likely to contemplate the suicide than their peers, with 1 LGBTQ youth out of 5 and more than 1 transgender youth in 3 reporting a suicide”.

The law received bipartite support – including Donald Trump, who then served his first presidential mandate, and signed the bill.

According to the 988 Lifeline website, LGBTQ communities are “disproportionately suicide and other mental health struggles due to historical and continuous structural violence”.

The Trevor project began to provide its services via the 988 Lifeline in 2022. In 2024, it served more than 231,000 contacts in crisis, the organization said in a statement. He says he will continue to provide his own independent services.

The decision to eliminate the designated LGBTQ youth option of 988 Lifeline occurs in the mid -push of Trump to reduce services, support and access to transgender people through the federal government.

He pushed to put an end to the policies of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within the federal government, arguing that these programs are themselves discriminatory.

The president also ordered the abolition of transgender military from the American army and has published an executive decree that the United States would only recognize two sexes – men and women.

The US State Department has also announced that it would no longer allow candidates to choose “X” as sex on American passports. Instead, transgender individuals must choose “masculine” or “female” corresponding to their gender attributed to birth.

If you suffer from distress or despair and need support, you can talk to a health professional or an organization that offers support. Details of the help available in many countries can be found in friendships around the world. www.befriends.org

In the United Kingdom, a list of organizations that can be useful is available on bbc.co.uk/actionline