Failure to provide adequate care to queer youth stands to have a generational impact<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last Thursday, July 17, the Trump administration formally removed services<\/a> 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\u2014as do its emergency counselling services,<\/a> which you can call, text or chat right now if you are in crisis\u2014the lack of federal funding will make it much harder for them to serve every queer teen who needs help. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of queer teens need help right now\u2014and 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<\/a> by up to 72 percent. The recent Supreme Court judgment in United States v. Skrmetti<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe day after the 2024 presidential election, The Trevor Project saw a nearly 700 percent increase<\/a> in volume across our crisis lines,\u201d says communications director Zach Eisenstein, in a statement provided to Xtra<\/em>. 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe cannot just easily replicate The Trevor Project,\u201d 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<\/a> to queer youth, they too are endangered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a really very challenging and potentially damaging time,\u201d says Dr. Caitlin Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project, which trains families to affirm queer and trans children. \u201cBecause not only are these services needed, but services like the [national suicide hotline] can\u2019t be replaced in the same way. There\u2019s this national absence. There\u2019s 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\u2019s passed through to the states.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration\u2019s rationale for cutting the hotline has been that it is choosing not to \u201csilo\u201d suicide prevention services\u2014queer youth can just call the same hotline as anyone else. There are a wide variety of reasons this won\u2019t work, says Ehrensaft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For one thing, trans and queer youth often have different underlying causes for their suicidal crises than their cis and straight counterparts: \u201cIt\u2019s not simply because they can\u2019t get what they want,\u201d says Ehrensaft. \u201cIt\u2019s because of their sense that people don\u2019t want them to be alive. They would like to erase them.\u201d Without specific training, therapists can wind up aggravating that crisis: \u201cThey\u2019re misgendering kids,\u201d Ehrensaft says. \u201cThey miss the boat if they don\u2019t have good training and specifically understand what gender minority stress is and how it could lead to an acute mental health moment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n