The Trevor Project’s suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ youth may soon go silent

Amy Kane was filled with dread when she learned that the national suicide prevention line would stop offering a specialized crisis intervention to young Americans LGBTQ + and ends her partnership with the Trevor project, based in West Hollywood.

With the service that would end on July 17, Kane, a therapist who identifies himself as a lesbian, believes that the Trump administration sends a clear message to queer Americans: “We don’t care if you live or die.”

Since its launch in 2022, more than 1.3 million young Americans in the grip with a mental health crisis have composed 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, which has given them the opportunity to press “3” to connect with a specialist trained to fight against their unique life experiences. As the larger of the seven LGBTQ +entrepreneurs, the Trevor project alone manages about half of all the volumes of queer appellants in line 988.

The government’s decision is still another side of the administration whose actions have left defenders and suppliers of Queer Public Health, notably at Los Angeles LGBTQ Center, where Kane is director of mental health services.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital sent letters to families in early June by saying that it was planning to suspend its health care program for transgender children and young adults in late July. The LGBTQ Center and other groups demanded that the reconsider hospital.

Above the same time, the news of line 988 and the Trevor project, a non -profit organization founded in 1998 by the manufacturers of the award -winning short film of the “Trevor” academy – on a teenager who tries to commit suicide – to approach the absence of a major prevention network adapted to the needs of queer youth.

“So many things have been launched in the past five months,” said Kane. “It is at all levels. It’s not just mental health. We see what is happening with the care affirmed by the sexes, the dramatic sections of research for HIV and the STIs. … What is the next step? “

Given the status of the as a paradise for LGBTQ + people – the first authorized pride parade took place in Hollywood in 1970 – Kane wonders if recent movements are an attempt to intimidate and punish the Californians to be so welcoming.

Threats are not only from Washington. Kane said that she and other leaders had to put pressure on state legislators recently to preserve the financing of a preventive program for women-health of Queer offered through the LGBTQ center which was to be revoked due to a state budget deficit. For the moment, the program has received a temporary stay.

“It was this idea of” oh yes, it is in the red states, but I am safe in California “- it no longer looks like that,” said Kane.

The staff of the Trevor project rushes to understand how to save jobs of approximately 200 advisers which are paid by the federal contract, including the collection of private funds to compensate for the unexpected deficit, said Mark Henson, acting vice-president of advocacy and government affairs. The news could not arrive at a worse moment, given that the national calls are in pace to reach 700,000 people in 2025. This is up compared to 600,000 in 2024, a spokesperson said, citing measures from the US substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

100 other crisis advisers are employed and paid separately by the Trevor project itself. They will continue to take calls via the 24/7 free crisis line of the project, one of the many options that LGBTQ + local organizations offer. The alternative response of the County County Crisis of Los Angeles has a 24/7 assistance line to (800) 854-7771 which also provides sensitive cultural support services.

But Alex Boyd, director of the intervention of the Trevor project crisis, said that he did not know how his organization can compensate for the loss of national visibility and federal support that partnership 988 offers them.

Young LGBTQ + are more than four times more likely to try to commit suicide than their peers, according to the Trevor project. His survey in 2024 revealed that in California, 35% of young LGBTQ + have seriously planned to commit suicide and that 11% of respondents had tried to commit suicide the previous year.

By defending the decision to stop working with the Trevor project during a hearing on the budget of the Chamber in May, the Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The big question, said Boyd, is that young Americans LGBTQ + who already feel avoided or poorly understood will always have a suicide prevention line which no longer offers advisers with which they can easily identify?

A unique approach does not work with regard to people in emotional and mental distress, said Boyd.

He fears the worst.

“The fact that such a large quantity of our impact capacity has now been deleted – there is no operational way to navigate in a moment like this which does not result, at least in the short term, in a loss of life.”

The TREVOR project advisers hear anxiety about the anti-LGBTQ + reaction in the votes of young appellants asking for help in the lifeline, said Boyd. “The statements we hear are:” Our government does not support me. The government actively erases my experience with the national conversation. “”

“More and more, the biggest thread we see young people who reach out to us is this idea that it is already difficult to be a young person in the world – it’s another layer that we add the lives of children,” said Boyd. “They come to tell us that they do not know how they will be able to travel more years before obtaining a certain level of autonomy and agency and to find a certain feeling of security.”

In addition to a multitude of executive actions signed by the President, thousands of bills targeting the LGBTQ + community have been presented in states legislatures, in cities and in school districts of California and in the country, including calls to prohibit books that mention homosexual relations and identity between sexes, eliminating the flag of the pride of government And transhatrous kicks of the sports teams.

Adding to pressure on the Queer community, the “Big Beau Bill” of Trump, recently described in the two chambers in the congress, reduces public health funding for low -income Americans who receive Medicaid. The Americans LGBTQ + are twice as likely to count on Medicaid to receive their health care as the other Americans, said Alexandra Curd, lawyer in the staff of the National Advocacy Group Lambda Legal.

More than 40% of unknown American adults living with HIV depend on the federal program for their health care needs, against 15% for the general population, according to KFF. Many recipients include non -profit organizations funded by federal subsidies to obtain HIV and STIs and receive HIV prevention drugs such as preparation and PEP, said Curd.

Due to the Medicaid cuts and the prospect of an increased difficulty in accessing preventive care and emotional support, “we may see an increase in HIV infections,” she said.

Curd said that a recent increase in HIV levels in Latin men could only worsen. Officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited a lack of adequate funding, racial bias, linguistic barriers and distrust of the medical system among the reasons why Latin gay and bisexual men represent a disproportionate percentage of new cases of HIV.

The assistance of Lambda Legal has already received more requests for assistance to health care, employment and discrimination of housing in the first half of 2025 than in all 2024, with the most urgent needs from trans and non -binary appellants.

Good news for the recently came when representative Laura Friedman (D – West Hollywood) announced that the Trump administration had restored more than $ 19 million in federal subsidies for HIV prevention and monitoring which were intended for the Department of Public Health of the County of Los Angeles but reduced by the CDC. Friedman said that she and others have spoken against the Cup had been able to obtain an additional $ 338,019 in federal funding for the new year from June 1.

But it is difficult for health care organizations to celebrate since Vital Health Funds and HIV programs have been targeted in the first place.

Manny Zermeño, specialist in behavioral health at the Long Beach office of another Queer Community Services, Apla Health, feels the distress of its customers. “There is fear, sadness and also with these feelings, it is natural to have anger and confusion,” said Zermeño.

The non -profit organization based in Los Angeles focuses on the provision of dental, medical, medical services, and other free and affordable services for Queer 18 and over. It was founded in 1982 as AIDS Los Angeles project. At the time, a small team of volunteers worked a telephone hotline in the los Angeles Gay and Lesbiens Community Service Center, aligning the calls of panicked residents in search of answers on what was a deadly disease for which there was no treatment.

The organization operated the first dental clinic in the United States to contact AIDS patients from a trailer in West Hollywood. After the Rock Hudson film star announced that he had AIDS in 1985, the organization galvanized the support among Angelenos by hosting the very first collection of Walk funds in Paramount Studios, according to his website.

Kane and the leaders of other community organizations of the La said that they would join again, this time to help the Trevor project.

“We all have boots on the ground – you will literally have to drag us with our ankles so as not to provide care for our community,” said Kane. “I do not believe that queer children will not have access to resources, because we do not allow it.”