Heidi Stevens: Shutting down hotline services for LGBTQ+ youth is malice by Trump administration

Chicago Tribune

5 hours ago

There's cost-cutting, and then there's cruelty.
President Donald Trump's administration appears determined to blur that line to the point of indistinction, using the former, over and over, to justify the latter. The decision to abruptly shut down the LGBTQ+ portion of a youth suicide and crisis hotline — a service that has no doubt saved countless lives — is the latest example.
The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ youth, received a stop work order, effective July 17, for the crisis services it provides to the national 988 suicide and crisis hotline. Since 2022, the group has provided crisis services to LGBTQ+ youth who contact the 988 Lifeline by offering them the option of being connected to counselors trained specifically in mental health for individuals who identify as LGBTQ+.
After July 17, the 988 Lifeline will remain in place, but will no longer provide specialized LGBTQ+ crisis counseling. A White House spokesman told the New York Times that the specialized portion of the hotline had 'run out of congressionally directed funding,' and continuing to fund it would jeopardize the entire operation.
'This is devastating, to say the least,' the Trevor Project wrote in a statement. 'Suicide prevention is about people, not politics. 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.'
Trevor Project counselors helped about 500,000 people in 2024, 231,000 of whom came through the 988 line, Zach Eisenstein, a spokesman for the organization, told The New York Times. Trevor Project is encouraging people to visit TheTrevorProject.org/ActNow to help fight the decision, which Congress could, in theory, reverse.
It's unconscionable that it's come to this. It's unconscionable that the physical, mental and emotional health of young people is on the chopping block because of who they are and who they love. It's unconscionable that our leaders, elected to serve and protect us, are instead finding new ways, daily, to degrade our humanity.
I called my friend and former podcast partner John Duffy, a clinical therapist who specializes in adolescent mental health, to get his take on the hotline shutdown. I wanted to hear from someone whose funding isn't being cut, but who is nonetheless on the front lines of suicide prevention.
I trust Duffy like no other on this topic — for his wise and enormous heart, for his evidence-based approach to helping young people and because he lost his own brother to suicide in 2001.
He is, in a word, heartbroken.
'By the time a kid feels inclined to call a hotline,' Duffy said, 'they are hopeless and they don't feel understood. If you are in the LGBTQ community and you feel hopeless and misunderstood, you don't have the luxury of shopping around. You need someone on that line who understands you now.'
LGBTQ+ youth often face family rejection, cultural rejection, discrimination, fear of personal violence, losing their civil rights — issues that call for an intentional, specified approach to care, Duffy said.
'Their mental health is a very delicate space,' he said. 'They need and deserve people who can handle that space with care. And to take that away when they're in a crisis state? It's lethal.'
Duffy said he began hearing from his clients as soon as the order made headlines.
'It feels to them like things are just going to get worse,' he said. 'They feel like they're being targeted directly. They feel like they're not going to have the support they need. They feel hated by massive groups of people just by virtue of who they are.'
Often, he said, his LGBTQ+ clients are struggling to accept themselves even as they're struggling for acceptance from the people they know and love.
'Many of them aren't comfortable with the idea of being L, G, B, T or Q,' he said. 'It's confusing and perplexing to them, even as they're trying to make other people comfortable with it. And the chance that they reach out in crisis and they hang up feeling unheard and misunderstood? The chance that their suicidal ideation remains, or they make a move to take their lives? That all just increased exponentially.'
There is zero defense for this. Zero.
Straight kids are impacted by the decision as well, Duffy said. They worry about their LGBTQ+ friends. They wonder what kind of world they're graduating into, growing into, and maybe, one day, bringing their own kids into. Hope feels hard for them to come by, he said.
'It's another indication of the depletion of the humanity of our systems,' he said.
And for what? For cost-cutting? I don't buy it. The cruelty is the point. And it's costing us dearly.