A Lifeline Cut—Ending LGBTQ Youth Suicide Support Puts Lives at Risk

Newsweek

2 days ago

The Trump administration recently announced it would cut the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline's LGBTQ youth specialized services program, ending a project that provides specific, culturally competent counseling services for LGBTQ youth. As a psychiatrist and the CEO of Mindful Care, a psychiatric urgent care provider, I am shocked and deeply concerned about the impact this decision will have on both LGBTQ kids and the nation's mental health crisis response infrastructure.
Since its launch in 2022, the national LGBTQ youth suicide lifeline has been an option available to all young people who call the national suicide prevention lifeline. If a young person reaches out to the 988 Lifeline, they are offered the option to speak with a counselor specifically trained to support LGBTQ youth in crisis.
Pride flags are placed on the fence of the Stonewall Monument during the 2025 New York City Pride March on June 29, 2025, in New York City.
Pride flags are placed on the fence of the Stonewall Monument during the 2025 New York City Pride March on June 29, 2025, in New York City.Since the project's launch in 2022, the LGBTQ youth suicide lifeline has responded to more than 1.3 million crisis calls and texts. In 2024, the Trevor Project, which was contracted to manage much of 988's LGBTQ specific call volume, reported that they responded to more than 231,000 crisis contacts. That's 231,000 kids in crisis in one year alone.
At Mindful Care, we provide same-day and next-day mental health appointments, a service that is desperately needed in a country where patients often face average waitlists of three months or longer. Our urgent care model provides quick access to care, meaning we see high volumes of patients in crisis. Like emergency rooms and crisis services across the country, we already struggle to handle the inflow of patients in crisis that come through our doors. We need more mental health crisis services, not cuts to an already strained system. And the national LGBTQ youth suicide lifeline has become a critical part of our system.
With a quick call or text, kids across the country can easily and anonymously reach an affirming source of support and a path to help. For kids growing up in homes where they can't be themselves or in communities with few LGBTQ affirming resources, this support can be the difference between life and death.
Terminating the national LGBTQ youth suicide lifeline rolls back a vital lifeline for a group of young people who already experience mental health distress at alarming and disproportionate rates. Public health data has consistently shown that LGBTQ kids are at elevated risk for mental health issues, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. In 2023, the Trevor Project's U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People found that 41 percent of LGBTQ youth had seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.
Specialized services work because they meet high‑risk individuals on their own terms. Just as veterans and disaster survivors benefit from counselors who speak their language, LGBTQ youth need crisis support that affirms their identities. LGBTQ youth are far more likely to shut down, hang up, or avoid help altogether when they don't feel seen or understood.
Despite the obvious need for and apparent success of the LGBTQ suicide lifeline, this critical support for LGBTQ kids will be shut down in less than a month. The rationale? A politically fueled claim that crisis counselors promote "radical gender ideology." In a statement, a Trump administration spokesperson dismissively called the lifeline service, "a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents."
According to a recent poll from Data for Progress, a strong, bipartisan majority of Americans support continued funding for the LGBTQ Youth Suicide Lifeline Service. Sixty-nine percent of voters, including 56 percent of Republicans, and 70 percent of independents said that the U.S. government should keep these crisis services in place. Less than one in four voters (23 percent) said the government should eliminate them.
It is not surprising that this program is popular with a majority of Americans. The LGBTQ youth suicide lifeline service is simply good public health policy. It's a proven, effective program that supports vulnerable kids and saves lives.
We know these services are needed. Over a million young people used them in under three years. Stripping away this valuable service puts thousands of LGBTQ kids in crisis at risk—all in an attempt to score a few political points. Health policy should be rooted in facts not prejudice. Congress can and should step in to defend these essential crisis services and reinstate funding for the LGBTQ youth suicide lifeline service.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "988" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
Dr. Tamir Aldad is a fellowship trained addiction psychiatrist and the founder and CEO of Mindful Care—the award winning first-ever psychiatric urgent care in the United States.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.