Are LGBTQ-exclusive suicide hotlines necessary?

Since late 2022, the government-run 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline greeted all callers with a prompt instructing them to press 1 if they were a veteran or service member, 2 if they wanted to speak to someone in Spanish, or 3 for specialized services for LGBTQ youth.

But this summer, the hotline removed the “Press 3” option.

When the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced in July that it was canceling the service, several states responded by bolstering their own LGBTQ youth crisis hotlines. Yet some advocates question whether crisis operators even need to know a caller’s sexual or gender identity in order to help them.

SAMHSA, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that federal funding dried up for the $33 million Press 3 project, which started in 2022 through a partnership with the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention nonprofit for LGBTQ youth. An agency representative told me in an email that “continued funding of the Press 3 option threatened to put the entire 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in danger of massive reductions in service.”

Several states have reacted swiftly to the Trump administration’s decision to end the Press 3 option. California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $700,000 contract with the Trevor Project to train counselors and offer “LGBTQ+ affirming crisis care.” Similarly, the Illinois Department of Human Services said it would expand crisis counselor training for LGBTQ youth and continue to “advertise the 988 Lifeline by using LGBTQIA+ affirming messages and imagery.”

According to SAMHSA figures, the number of 988 callers who were pressing 3 was growing steadily. In 2022, fewer than 27,000 contacts selected the option in its first months. By this summer, calls had tripled, with over 69,000 contacts in June 2025—the most it had ever received in a single month.

With the option gone, some young Americans have turned to youth crisis lines in their own states.

Patricia Behrens, co-director of 2NDFLOOR, a 24-hour, state-funded anonymous helpline for youth in New Jersey, said the number of contacts using their service to inquire about LGBTQ issues has doubled since the Press 3 option ended.

“They might be calling about different types of areas within LGBTQ, whether it be dating, orientation,” she said. “It’s making up 18.3% of our calls.”

Behrens said that, normally, calls concerning LGBTQ topics constituted 9% of the New Jersey crisis hotline’s volume. Views of LGBTQ-themed posts to their online messaging board have nearly quadrupled, she added.

Representatives of the national 988 hotline say that young people with sexual or gender identity issues can still get help if they call 988, but they’ll be routed to an operator on the main line instead.

According to the Trevor Project, young people who identify as LGBTQ are four times as likely to contemplate or commit suicide than average youth. “This administration has made a dangerous decision to play politics with real young people’s lives,” Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black said in a July statement about the Press 3 cancellation.

Elizabeth Woning, co-founder of the CHANGED Movement, a Christian support group for people who formerly identified as LGBTQ, acknowledges that youth struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity face a greater incidence of depression and mental illness. But she argues that focusing on a caller’s sexual and gender orientation is counterproductive.

“In singling out LGBT youth … it’s reinforcing a falsehood that somehow LGBT-identifying youth who experience depression are facing greater or different challenges than their peers,” she said.

According to Woning, suicidal LGBTQ youth can get the same crisis care as suicidal youth and still get the same relief. Woning said that when she was 26, she was suicidal, struggling with bipolar disorder and self-harm. She also had come out as a lesbian and was estranged from her parents. So she dialed a suicide hotline.

Woning said she required psychiatric care and multiple hospitalizations. “I received adequate care without having to press 3 … without the need of specialized LGBT attention,” she said. Woning, now married to a man, says on her website that she is “fulfilled, joyful, and feminine—all things that I never was while living as a lesbian.”

Everyone I spoke with said 988 is still a good place to call for anyone, regardless of his or her beliefs on sexuality and gender, who is contemplating suicide or in a mental health crisis. Individuals who want to talk with a Christian crisis counselor can reach out to Focus on the Family’s crisis hotline or use the American Association of Christian Counselors’ website to find a counselor or treatment center near them.

If the Press 3 option were available when she called in the 1990s, Woning said she would have pressed it. But looking back, she says it wouldn’t have made a difference.

“When I was calling the crisis hotline, I was concerned about surviving my moment,” she said. “I wasn’t concerned whether they knew that I was a lesbian.”