In the three years it has existed, the specialized services line for LGBTQ+ youth on the nationwide 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline has been heralded as a major step forward in aiding young queer people in crisis.
Now, however, the future of the specialized services line is under threat. The Trump administration is proposing defunding the specialized services option for LGBTQ+ youth in the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2026 budget.
It would be a seismic change to the program. Anyone experiencing a mental health crisis can call 988 to be connected to a trained counselor for help, but LGBTQ+ youth currently have an additional option: after calling 988, they can select to be connected to a counselor specially trained to provide them with support.
According to Chris Bouneff, executive director at National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Oregon, that option makes a significant difference.
“People who identify as LGBTQ+ need to feel comfortable with the people they’re reaching out to,” Bouneff said. “Otherwise they won’t reach out. So the impacts are huge… if they do away with this option, we will see a severe impact.”
Like veterans, who also have an option to be connected to specially trained counselors, LGBTQ+ youth experience elevated rates of depression and suicidal thought. A 2024 study found that four in 10 LGBTQ+ youth said they had considered attempting suicide in the past year. One in five did attempt suicide.
The data suggests queer youth are utilizing the 988 lifeline in high numbers. Since it was launched in 2022, the crisis number has fielded some 14.5 million calls—1.3 million of which have been directed to the specialized services line for LGBTQ+ youth. Data show 100,000 people accessed the specialty services line for LGBTQ+ youth in January and February alone.
It is as of yet unclear whether the funding will ultimately be cut. The White House’s budget proposal will ultimately go before Congress—where the specialized services option continues to enjoy strong Democratic support.
Still, the possibility of losing the specialized service line for LGBTQ+ youth has alarmed care providers and activists across the country.
“It is vital that these young people have the resources they need in a moment of crisis and these resources be national—that they be available whether you live in a rural area or a city, that it not depend on what state you’re in or who controls your statehouse,” Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the Trevor Project, said. “That is part of the great benefit of the national 988 system.”
The proposed defunding of the specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth has come as part of a much broader assault on queer Americans, with many of the Trump administration’s attacks targeting transgender people in particular.
Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has launched a broad attack on transgender people—issuing executive orders announcing that the government will only recognize two unchangeable sexes, blocking gender marker changes on passports, and defunding gender-affirming care for trans youth.
In the wake of Trump’s victory in last November’s presidential election—which followed months of intensely transphobic campaign advertisements and language from Trump and his campaign—LGBTQ+ youth have turned to crisis support lines in increased numbers.
“I can tell you that the day after election day last year, the Trevor Project saw a 700 percent increase in young people reaching out to crisis services,” Pick said. “That is the highest spike in our measurements. We similarly saw a spike after Inauguration Day.”
Bouneff said that NAMI Oregon is similarly seeing higher levels of anxiety and depression driven by the current political environment—with the anxiety produced by the administration’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies compounded by other policies targeting other marginalized groups.
“People feel under threat,” Bouneff said. “It’s not just gender identity, it’s also immigration status, race, and ethnicity—people feel under assault. And it’s constant.”
The potential elimination of specialized services on the 988 line, which comes amid a broader effort to cut budgets and slash the workforce at the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), would likely have different impacts in different parts of the country.
In Oregon and Washington, the impact of any cut to the 988 program’s federal funding would likely be lessened by the existence of state-level funding sources.
Last year, the Oregon State Legislature passed a law that partially funds the program’s operation within the state by levying a $0.40 tax on phone lines each month. Washington has a similar funding structure for its 988 line, though both states still use some federal money to finance the program and are vulnerable to cuts.
Trump’s budget proposal would not actually cut funding for 988, but simply prohibit funding from being used on the specialized services line for LGBTQ+ youth.
If the program is funded to the same level it was this year, Oregon should be able to continue to offer LGBTQ+ youth a similar level of support as it does now. Calls to 988 in Oregon are answered by clinicians with the nonprofits Lines for Life or Northwest Human Services, all of whom are trained to work with young people and queer people. The state is hoping to further raise the visibility of 988 through an advertising campaign this summer.
Oregon also has other outlets that provide support to LGBTQ+ youth in crisis such as YouthLine at 877-968-8491—a peer-to-peer support line for queer youth up to the age of 24. Greg Borders, chief clinical officer at Lines for Life, said YouthLine is aiming to expand to Hawaii later this year and is also looking at opening on the East Coast as well.
But the elimination of the national LGBTQ+ services line, Borders added, could still have a sizable impact on who ends up reaching out for help to begin with.
“Specialty lines exist in part to make people unfamiliar with the system… feel more comfortable and more confident knowing that they’re going to reach someone who empathizes with their struggles and challenges and is trained to work with them,” Borders said.
People who don’t have any assurance that the clinician they speak to, when they dial 988, is equipped to support them may be less likely to call. Other people, if they think 988 is no longer an option, may not know where to turn.
Part of the impetus behind launching 988 was that the number is intentionally easy to remember—just three digits, available nationwide.
That has made a significant difference. The Trevor Project has offered a specialized services line for LGBTQ+ youth for decades, but Pick said that when the organization became part of the 988 network, the volume of calls it was able to take doubled.
“That ease of access saves lives,” Pick said.
There is little data to track how effective the 988 specialized services line has been or how many lives it has saved, but the extent to which the service is being utilized suggests that people who need it are accessing help.
That, ostensibly, is the goal. But while there is no guarantee that the Trump administration will get its wish around specialized services funding, the fact that the funding is in jeopardy—after the first Trump administration supported the creation of 988—speaks to a chilling shift in thinking about the value of LGBTQ+ lives.
“While we can disagree on a wide range of issues affecting LGBTQ+ people—sports, healthcare, education policy—where there is a striking bipartisan support and unanimity is on suicide prevention, on mental health,” Pick said. “We can disagree on a lot of things, but we have always agreed on the importance of saving young lives.”
Given the administration’s position, Pick said, states like Oregon and Washington must step up to protect their residents’ mental health—both through funding 988 and also through other avenues like funding and training school counselors and community groups. Meanwhile, the battle over specialized services funding is set to continue into the summer with increasingly high stakes.
“The fact is that more people are calling and using the youth specialized services line every month,” Pick said. “What we should be doing here is strengthening this vital resource, not threatening it.”
