How LGBTQ Youth Benefit From Texting With Centerstone | Cover Stories

Today’s teens are more likely to text than call. And when LGBTQ teens around the country text 988, their messages could be routed to Centerstone in Nashville — one of four centers answering the texts nationally.

Kelly Bombardiere, vice president of 988 crisis services at nonprofit mental health network Centerstone, manages a staff of 25 people trained to answer the text line aimed at LGBTQ folks. Local staff manage an estimated 4,000 interactions per month, she tells the Scene. The National Suicide Hotline was launched in 2005, and added texting in 2020. It was changed to 988 in 2022, and has since seen an uptick in use.

“It didn’t used to exist on the scale that it does now,” Bombardiere says of the text line. “I think with social media and how present youth are online, having the ability to get the assistance that they need online has just vastly improved their quality of life. More people reach out now than they ever have before.”

Bombardiere’s staff is specially trained in inclusive language and a history of discriminatory laws. They have Human Rights Campaign and GLMA (previously known as the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association) websites at the ready to make sure they are giving texters accurate information based on the state they are messaging from.

The line can connect people to an affirming family medicine provider, mental health therapy, community-based resources and support groups. However, in Tennessee, 988 operators can no longer pass along information about gender-affirming care. Hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries were banned in 2023, and the state is awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the matter. Traveling out of state for gender-affirming care without parental permission was also banned this year by the Tennessee General Assembly.

At Oasis Center, a local nonprofit focused on crisis prevention for LGBTQ youth, director Joseph Clark noticed teens in their program benefited from the option of using a chat function and keeping some anonymity.

“[Texting and messaging] is easy to access in that moment, especially when they are in such an elevated state of crisis,” Clark says. “Maybe they don’t even know how to articulate what they’re experiencing or what they’re feeling. Being able to type it out may be a little bit easier than trying to find the words to speak it out to somebody on the receiving end.”

LGBTQ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their peers, according to data collected by The Trevor Project. A 2023 survey by the nonprofit found that 41 percent of LGBTQ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the preceding year, including roughly half of transgender and nonbinary youth. Clark points out that suicide rates and suicidal ideation are undercounted, and adds that being LGBTQ does not inherently make a person more likely to experience mental health struggles. Rather, it’s hostility encountered in their environment that increases this likelihood, and Tennessee has been an especially threatening environment. More discriminatory legislation against LGBTQ youth is filed each year. This year, schools were given protection for misgendering students, while state officials unsuccessfully attempted to ban certain public drag shows in 2023.

“An LGBTQ identity is [not] synonymous with having a mental health illness and needing connection to therapy and mental health support,” Clark explains. “It is because of this facet of your identity in the environment that we’re finding ourselves in, with the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and the anti-LGBTQ+ headlines, and the bullying, ostracization and discrimination that LGBTQ+ young people face — that all impacts their mental health.”

The 988 line is not just for suicidal ideation, Bombardiere points out — it’s for supportive listening on a range of topics. For LGBTQ youth, it can function as a practice conversation for coming out to the family.

“I refer to 988 as kind of like a catchall,” she says. “It’s for anything, because everyone’s definition of a crisis is different.”

Clark points out that parent affirmation has come a long way, and Gen Z is much more willing to reach out and seek community than previous generations. Switching to a three-digit number has made the suicide hotline more accessible too, Bombardiere adds.

Clark says adults need to trust young people to find the right words for their identity. Even if they don’t have the right words yet, they know what doesn’t fit.

“They know themselves best at the end of the day,” he says. “We have to rely on that young person to know they are the expert on what they’re sharing with us.”