On July 17, the Trump administration will be shutting down a national suicide and crisis hotline intended to assist LGBTQ+ youth, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The service is provided as part of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and sometimes known as the press 3 option. It has routed nearly 1.3 million calls since its introduction in September 2022.
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline will continue to operate without the subnetwork service.
LGBTQ+ high school students are over three times more likely to have seriously considered suicide within the last year than cisgender and heterosexual students, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report.
Three-quarters of LGBTQ+ young people who use hotline or crisis services have considered suicide in the past year, according to The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization for LGBTQ+ young people specializing in suicide prevention and crisis intervention.
The Trevor Project routed more than 231,000 crisis contacts and trained nearly 250 crisis counselors and operational support staff to support the 988 Lifeline, according to The Trevor Project.
Adrien Lawyer, the co-founder and director of education of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, called the removal “devastating.”
“Trying to curb access to both of those things for LGBTQ youth, trans and non-binary youth, does genuinely mean that young people will die," Lawyer said.
The Trump administration’s actions are aligned with this administration's insistence that trans people don't really exist in the first place,” Lawyer said.
The statement refers to the press 3 option as an “LGB+” service, leaving out the T for transgender.
In January, the Trump administration issued an order withdrawing protections for LGBTQ+ people issued during the Biden administration, such as the right to serve in the military, discrimination protections in areas such as federal education, housing and immigration protections and protections for LGBTQ+ youth, according to Human Rights Watch.
The Trump administration's refusal to acknowledge transgender individuals lacks scientific backing, Lawyer said.
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“Biological sex is complex and diverse and varied, especially among human beings,” Lawyer said.
Biological sex is not a simple binary, and instead is made up of many factors, including chromosomes, hormones, and secondary sexual characteristics, according to a peer-reviewed article published within the National Institute of Health.
Transgender people have existed and been documented throughout history and across cultures, including indigenous, Western and Eastern societies, according to the American Psychological Association.
Zoey Leyba — the outreach coordinator for Agora Crisis Center, a crisis hotline affiliated with the University of New Mexico — worries that these cuts could lead people to be less aware of what resources are available in times of crisis, and the resources that are available will become less visible, she said.
“With these very uncertain times, we want to just be another, solid resource that people can rely on,” Leyba said.
Agora and the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico haven’t yet been greatly affected or targeted by federal actions, Lawyer and Leyba said, as these organizations rely partly on private donations for funding.
Leyba said it is important to have specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth because it helps build a better “rapport” and “connection” when someone calls the crisis line.
“Agora provides compassionate, confidential and free, compassionate listening services to anybody who calls, whether that's someone who they're experiencing,” Leyba said. “Like a mental health crisis, thoughts of self-harm, struggling with substance use issues, suicide, those sort of things, all the way to just like, students on campus needing to talk about what's going on in their life.”
Lawyer said the effect of the cuts could extend beyond just losing a needed service.
“We find that it also tends to send a really horrible, sort of top-down message to these kids about their worth and their importance and their value,” Lawyer said.
“We know this is a really difficult and dark time, and it can be easy to want to give up because it's hard to hold on to hope when things look this bad,” Lawyer said. “But I hope that those kids will believe that they can have meaningful, full, joyful adult lives with friends and relationships and pets and hobbies and jobs that they like, I really see that future for them, and I if they aren't able to see it, I hope they'll let us see it for them until they're able to see it.”
Jaden McKelvey-Francis is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at editorinchief@dailylobo.com or on X @jadenmckelvey
