June 18 (UPI) — The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline no longer will offer a specialized service for LGBTQ callers as of July 17.
The Trump administration issued a stop-work order to the non-profit Trevor Project, which has operated the specialized 988 LGBTQ suicide lifeline since 2022, the New York Times reported.
Officials with the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration confirmed the stop-work order calls for the hotline to cease operation on July 17.
Suicide prevention services remain available, but there no longer will be a “Press 3 option” for LGBTQ callers.
“Everyone who contacts the 988 Lifeline will continue to receive access to skilled, caring, culturally competent crisis counselors who can help with suicidal, substance misuse, or mental health crises or any other kind of emotional distress,” SAMHSA officials said in a prepared statement.
Trevor Project Chief Executive Officer Jaymes Black said the end of the specialized hotline is very bad for the LGBTQ community.
“This is devastating, to say the least,” Black told The Hill. “Suicide prevention is about people, not politics.”
He called the specialized hotline a “bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible.”
The LGBTQ suicide prevention service was established in 2022 to address the needs of respective callers, many of whom “experience distinct mental health issues,” the New York Times reported.
Such issues include discrimination and rejection by family members, which contributes to high suicide rates within the LGBTQ community.
SAMHSA officials said the Press 3 service option received $29.7 million in federal funding for the 2023 fiscal year and $33 million for each of the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years.
The specialized hotline’s entire 2025 budget was spent as of June, and no more funding is coming, according to SAMHSA.
The suicide prevention hotline will get the same $520 million in funding for the 2026 fiscal year as it did for 2025, Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Rachel Cauley told NBC News.
The budget won’t “grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by ‘counselors’ without consent or knowledge of their parents,” Cauley said.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was established in 2005, and President Donald Trump in 2020 signed legislation establishing the specialized service for LGBTQ callers.
The specialized service received about 1.3 million calls, texts and online chat messages since 2022, according to SAMHSA.
It also received an average of 2,100 contacts every day in February.
