President Donald Trump’s administration is shutting down the national suicide prevention hotline’s LGBTQ youth-specific care starting on July 17.
“On July 17, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will no longer silo LGB+ youth services, also known as the ‘Press 3 option,’ to focus on serving all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press 3 option,” a news release from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, reads.
The suicide hotline added the Press 3 option in 2022 in a contract with the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention nonprofit for LGBTQ+ youth. People could call the suicide hotline at 988 and then press 3 to be directed to a trained counselor who would help people who identify as LGBTQ+.
SAMHSA, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a news release that anyone who contacts 988 will continue to receive “compassion and help.”
The Trevor Project said in a news release that it was notified Tuesday of the elimination of Press 3, through which operators have fielded about 1.3 million calls, texts or chats.
Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, called the shutdown “devastating.”
“Suicide prevention is about people, not politics,” Black said in a news release. “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.”
Black also called out the administration for removing the “T” from the acronym “LGBTQ+” in the SAMHSA news release. “LGBTQ+” stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and more.”
“The fact that this news comes to us halfway through Pride Month is callous – as is the administration’s choice to remove the ‘T’ from the acronym ‘LGBTQ+’ in their announcement. Transgender people can never, and will never, be erased,” Black said.
After HHS proposed cutting the Press 3 option for the hotline, Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told NBC News that the rest of the crisis hotline would still be available.
“It does not, however, grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by ‘counselors’ without consent or knowledge of their parents,” Cauley said.
LGBTQ+ youth are at higher risk of suicide, not because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, the Trevor Project has said, but because of how they are treated by society. They are more than four times likely to attempt suicide than their non-LGBTQ+ peers, and according to a 2022 survey from the Trevor Project, nearly half of LGBTQ+ youth had considered suicide.