Queer youth need suicide hotlines more than ever. The Trump admin is gutting them

Last Thursday, July 17, the Trump administration formally removed services for queer and trans teenagers from the National Suicide Hotline. The services had been provided by The Trevor Project, a long-standing suicide prevention and mental health crisis service for LGBTQ2S+ young people, and though The Trevor Project still exists—as do its emergency counselling services, which you can call, text or chat right now if you are in crisis—the lack of federal funding will make it much harder for them to serve every queer teen who needs help. 

A lot of queer teens need help right now—and trans youth, in particular, are extremely vulnerable. Their already high rates of suicidal ideation have been rising in response to bans on gender-affirming care; a 2024 survey from The Trevor Project found that in states with anti-trans laws, suicide attempts by trans youth had risen by up to 72 percent. The recent Supreme Court judgment in United States v. Skrmetti, which ruled that bans on puberty blockers and other gender-affirming care for minors did not constitute discrimination, makes it likely that the number will keep going up. 

“The day after the 2024 presidential election, The Trevor Project saw a nearly 700 percent increase in volume across our crisis lines,” says communications director Zach Eisenstein, in a statement provided to Xtra. It was the highest daily volume of calls since The Trevor Project began offering crisis services. Queer youth are losing access to mental healthcare and crisis services right when they need them most, leaving the queer community scrambling to support its youngest and most vulnerable members in the absence of professional care. 

“We cannot just easily replicate The Trevor Project,” says Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, a developmental and clinical psychologist who specializes in affirming care for trans and gender-expansive youth. It takes resources and money to train gender-affirming providers and connect them with the community. Worse: non-profits, as a whole, are facing deep cuts to their funding under the Trump administration, and queer-focused non-profits are at particular risk. This means that, even though there are other organizations and hotlines providing crisis support to queer youth, they too are endangered. 

“This is a really very challenging and potentially damaging time,” says Dr. Caitlin Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project, which trains families to affirm queer and trans children. “Because not only are these services needed, but services like the [national suicide hotline] can’t be replaced in the same way. There’s this national absence. There’s an absence at the state level, the local level, the community level, or even at the level of a local program that gets some funding from the federal government that’s passed through to the states.” 

The Trump administration’s rationale for cutting the hotline has been that it is choosing not to “silo” suicide prevention services—queer youth can just call the same hotline as anyone else. There are a wide variety of reasons this won’t work, says Ehrensaft. 

For one thing, trans and queer youth often have different underlying causes for their suicidal crises than their cis and straight counterparts: “It’s not simply because they can’t get what they want,” says Ehrensaft. “It’s because of their sense that people don’t want them to be alive. They would like to erase them.” Without specific training, therapists can wind up aggravating that crisis: “They’re misgendering kids,” Ehrensaft says. “They miss the boat if they don’t have good training and specifically understand what gender minority stress is and how it could lead to an acute mental health moment.” 

Failure to provide adequate care to queer youth stands to have a generational impact. Trauma incurred in childhood is particularly damaging, and can be incredibly difficult to deal with in later life. The early-childhood stressors known as ACEs—Adverse Childhood Experiences, such as abuse, neglect or witnessing violence within the home—can harm children’s early brain development and immune systems, leading not only to adult mental illness or suicide, but to increased rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes. 

Unsurprisingly, homophobia and transphobia have similar effects on queer youth. Research provided to Xtra by the Family Acceptance Project finds that non-affirming homes are linked not only to suicidality, but to homelessness, run-ins with the juvenile justice system, substance abuse and higher rates of STIs. Turning the culture toxic for trans and queer children while cutting them off from specialized support, means not only that more children will die—though they will— but also that the survivors are likely to have more difficult and painful adult lives. 

Now, here is the good news: Though childhood trauma can significantly decrease the survivor’s chances of a healthy and happy adult life, receiving childhood support can significantly raise them. Even if we cannot replicate or replace the full impact of the services being cut right now, we can provide emergency support for community members and their families, and that will make an impact. 

For actual therapists, this means engaging in more pro bono work and outreach. “I think it’s going to take a level of volunteerism for many of us,” says Ehrensaft. “In terms of being a mental health provider, the way we were all trained is to stay in your office and let people come to you … If you do the work we’re doing, you have to either train yourself to step out of your office into the community, to be part of advocacy, or if you can’t do it, support the people who are.” 

For parents, now is the time to double down on support of their queer and trans kids. It does matter, even when you feel like it doesn’t. Affirming parents—particularly the parents of trans children—are also under particular stress right now, as you would be if all the most powerful people in the United States government decided to kill your children, and creating support for them is crucial. Luckily, the increased cultural awareness of queer and trans youth means those support structures are more widely available. 

“LGBTQ2S+ community centres, increasingly, are providing support groups that just weren’t in place only a few years ago,” says Ryan. “Both peer-related groups for the youth and the children to get support as well as support for the family. So finding other families to connect with is one of the most important things that [parents] can do, self-educating to learn about what’s happening in their community.” 

If you don’t have a support group, you may be able to create one. Mental health journalist Sandy Ernest Allen tells me he’s been focusing on getting queer and trans people over to his house. It’s not a support group, but it’s a group that is supportive, and it helps. For suicidality, in particular, just having non-judgmental spaces in which to discuss those feelings can be life-saving. Allen mentions the work of the peer-based support group Alternatives to Suicide: “The idea was [that] it’s not a room where if you mention the fact that you have these thoughts or you’ve had these ideas or you have this history, that you’re going to get some diagnosis or be locked up … Kind of like AA is for drunks, this is a room for people who think about suicide.” 

The vast majority of queer mental health care throughout history has just been this: queer people finding ways to support each other in the face of a world that is radically opposed to our thriving. We can’t replace The Trevor Project’s hotline or fully replicate the mental health effect of a supportive community. We can’t substitute for a loving family or a school where you’re not bullied. We can’t perform therapy if we’re not therapists (please, don’t try). But countless children have been saved by having one safe adult who was willing to check in on them, ask how they’re doing and honestly listen to them. We, as queer children who survived into adulthood, can be those people now—so that those kids can survive, and care for the ones who come after them, when it’s time.