The Trump administration has just made another massive move by pulling the plug on the 988 suicide hotline’s LGBTQ youth option. As you might expect, it’s already big news everywhere, with critics calling the move heartless.
However, there’s a question the country must answer: has the politicization of mental health and gender identity helped these struggling teens or made them worse? With suicide rates increasing among these young people, it’s high time we start asking these hard questions.
Suicidal Ideation and Gender Confusion on the Rise
In 2023, there were nearly 50,000 suicide deaths among U.S. teens. Transgender and gender-questioning youth suicide accounted for 26% of these deaths. Reports like this have prompted LGBT advocates to push for the need for special identity-based services. But what if these prove something else?
Within the last 10 years, there has been an explosion of gender ideology, especially on TikTok, where you find a lot of teens. Exposure to such content has led to an increase in youths who identify as transgender from 0.7% in 2009 to over 5% in 2023.
It’s been discovered that young people who identify as trans or non-binary suffer higher levels of psychological distress. And this is after discrimination has been accounted for and eliminated. This is proof that gender ideology might not be the fix, but a huge part of the problem.
Ideology is Not a Crisis Plan
Critics have branded the decision to shut down the “Press 3” hotline as war on queer kids. Yet, they fail to mention that the 988 Lifeline is not going anywhere. What that means is that trained counselors are still available to handle all sorts of issues without making it a gender politics issue.
Another thing critics fail to mention is that despite the program costing $33 million last year, there is still an increase in suicidal ideation among queer youth. Just last year, the Trevor Project handled 231,000 crisis contacts. Therefore, this demand only reinforces unstable identities rather than solving the issue of suicide among these young people. The problem is that we are treating ideology as therapy, and until we return to real therapy without making it gender based, the crisis will continue.
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