New York Builds Its Own Crisis Line as 988 Restores 'Press 3'
New York has $1.8 million for a dedicated LGBTQIA+ youth crisis line, timed to the return of 988's Press 3 option after a 14-month shutdown.
For more than a year, an LGBTQ+ teenager in crisis who called the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline had no direct route to a counselor who specialized in them. That route reopened on September 30. Albany, meanwhile, has been building a version it controls.
The route is called Press 3. Callers under 25 can press it after dialing 988, or text PRIDE, or use the online chat, and land with counselors trained specifically to work with LGBTQ+ young people. The option ran from 2022 until July 2025, when the federal government removed it. Its return came from a congressional mandate and more than a year of lobbying. New York's parallel effort is smaller in dollars and harder to switch off, and it is aimed at the same gap.
The Option That Came Back
For fourteen months, the specialized service simply was not there. SAMHSA, the federal agency that oversees the lifeline, announced in June 2025 that it would stop setting aside a separate channel for what it called LGB+ youth, and the Press 3 option went dark the following month. Along with veterans, LGBTQ+ callers were one of only two groups the lifeline had singled out for targeted counselors, on the grounds that both face sharply elevated suicide risk.
The numbers behind that decision to segregate, and behind the decision to undo it, are large. More than 1.3 million queer young people used Press 3 between its launch and its suspension, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times. Before the shutdown, the option was handling between 50,000 and 60,000 young people a month nationwide, the New York State Office of Mental Health reported. The Trevor Project, which helped design and run the service, handled nearly half the network's contact volume, including more than 231,000 crisis contacts in 2024 alone.
Restoring it took an act of Congress. A bipartisan health funding bill passed in January directed the administration to bring the option back, with $33.1 million allocated to the program. Administration officials later testified under oath that the service would return by the end of September, and SAMHSA worked with Vibrant Emotional Health, the administrator of the 988 network, to make that deadline. The dedicated line for veterans was never interrupted.
A Line New York Will Run Itself
New York's answer predates the restoration by a couple of weeks. On September 18, the Office of Mental Health announced the availability of $1.8 million to establish a dedicated crisis lifeline for the state's LGBTQIA+ youth and young adults. Commissioner Ann Sullivan unveiled the funding at the annual LGBTQIA+ Convening at the Empire State Plaza Concourse in Albany.
The structure matters more than the headline figure. Of the total, $1.2 million is recurring, committed annually over five years, and it goes to an organization that already operates a 24/7 crisis service for LGBTQ+ young people. The state is not asking anyone to invent a call center from scratch; it is buying capacity from a provider with an existing clinical bench. The remaining $600,000 is a one-time award to train crisis counselors who answer 988 calls in New York, so that the general line handles these callers better even when they never press 3.
What the State Is Buying
The request for proposal, numbered MH263038, spells out the service model. Counselors on the dedicated line are expected to provide culturally informed crisis intervention, emotional support and safety planning, plus referrals and follow-up for callers who need ongoing care rather than a single conversation.
Sullivan framed the investment as a matter of removing friction. The young people in question, she said, deserve a lifeline that meets their immediate and specific needs without putting barriers in front of critical support. Governor Kathy Hochul, whose FY 2027 budget carried the funding, described it as an extension of the state's broader spending on youth mental health.
Why the Federal Program Went Dark
The official explanation for the 2025 shutdown was money. An HHS spokesperson said at the time that the Press 3 option was halted because its funding ran out. The agency's own announcement used different language, saying it would no longer silo LGB+ youth services from the general hotline. The usual T in the acronym, for transgender, was absent from that release, which followed an executive order directing federal agencies to recognize only two sexes.
Advocates read the two explanations as one decision. Whatever the stated reason, the practical effect was that a population with four times the suicide attempt rate of its straight and cisgender peers lost a service built for it, and the burden of restoring it shifted to Congress and to states. NAMI, which organized more than 15,000 letters to Capitol Hill on the issue, called the return a victory produced by sustained pressure rather than a change of policy philosophy.
That history is the argument for New York's approach. A federally administered option can be created and withdrawn by the same agency within three years. A state contract, funded through the budget and written into a multi-year award, moves at a different speed and answers to a different set of officials.
The Provider That Got Left Out
The restoration is not a clean sequel. The Trevor Project, which built the Press 3 service and served as its first provider, will not be part of the rebuilt network. SAMHSA limited applications to organizations that were already active members of the 988 network, and Trevor no longer held that status after the specialized service was discontinued. The organization submitted a proposal anyway. It was rejected.
Chief executive Jaymes Black told The Advocate that the decision was hard to accept. The exclusion of the group's nearly three decades of expertise, Black said, was disappointing. Black also raised a concern that goes to how the restored line will actually operate: the administration has required Press 3 to comply with an executive order directing the federal government not to recognize transgender identities, and it is not clear whether counselors on the new line will be permitted to affirm transgender and nonbinary callers.
What the Agency Has Not Said
SAMHSA has not published the list of providers selected for the restored network, and it has not explained the criteria used to evaluate applications or the reasoning behind Trevor's rejection. The agency is also operating under a congressional directive rather than a settled policy, which means the shape of the service after this fiscal year is an open question. Trevor continues to run its own 24-hour lines and is training 988 counselors in California and Illinois to work with LGBTQ+ young people, an arrangement that does not depend on the federal network.
Who Is Actually Calling
The case for a specialized line rests on a set of numbers that have been remarkably stable across surveys. They describe a population that is not merely uncomfortable with the general crisis system but measurably at risk of dying inside it.
| Measure, LGBTQ+ young people in the past year | Share |
|---|---|
| Seriously considered suicide | about 36% |
| Transgender and nonbinary youth who considered it | about 40% |
| Attempted suicide | about 10% |
| Wanted mental health care but could not get it, and said no one would understand their identity | about 28% |
Those figures come from The Trevor Project's national survey, and the same research documents what sits underneath them: family rejection, bullying, discrimination, housing instability and elevated rates of substance use. The last item is where crisis care and addiction treatment overlap most directly. Adolescents who lose housing or family support often arrive at a crisis line or an emergency department before they ever reach an outpatient program, and the quality of that first contact shapes whether a referral turns into treatment.
That is the case for training the general 988 workforce rather than only standing up a separate line. New York's $600,000 training award is aimed at counselors who answer ordinary calls from young people who will never know a specialized option exists.
What It Means for New York Families
The practical upshot is that New York will soon have two doors for the same population, one federal and one state. Press 3 is live nationally right now. The dedicated state line is still a procurement: OMH will evaluate submissions and select an existing provider, and the funding is written to recur annually rather than expire after a pilot.
Local organizations have been filling the gap in the meantime. Lower Adirondack Pride, a nonprofit in the North Country that is not a crisis agency, reported a 25 percent increase in LGBTQ+ youth reaching out since the specialized service was suspended, and its president, Cam Cardinale, described spending the interval doing warm handoffs to The Trevor Project's lines. He told CBS6 that the state budget line was created because the community pushed for a solution of its own.
For families in New York, the practical list is short:
- 988 reaches the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, where callers under 25 can press 3 or text PRIDE for LGBTQ+ youth specialists.
- The OASAS HOPEline, 1-877-846-7369, runs 24 hours for addiction and problem gambling.
- FindAddictionTreatment.ny.gov lists treatment programs across the state, and SAMHSA's National Helpline, 1-800-662-4357, offers free referrals in English and Spanish.
What to Watch Next
Three things will determine whether this becomes durable infrastructure or another temporary patch. The first is procurement: how quickly OMH selects a provider, and whether the winning organization can absorb calls at the volume the gap implies. The second is federal continuity, since Press 3 currently rests on a funding directive rather than a statute; NAMI and other groups are pushing to write the option into law so the next administration cannot cancel it by declining to renew a contract.
The third is transparency. SAMHSA has not said who will run the restored service or whether its counselors may recognize transgender and nonbinary identities, and those answers shape whether callers in New York get something closer to what existed in 2024 or a narrower version of it. Until those questions are settled, the state line under construction in Albany is the part of this system New York can actually see.
Written by
MTNYC Editorial TeamThe MTNYC Editorial Team is a group of healthcare writers, researchers, and addiction specialists dedicated to providing accurate, compassionate, and evidence-based information about addiction treatment and recovery resources in New York State.
