11 questions with an LGBTQ suicide helpline
Kelli Peterman runs the Trevor Project's helpline for LGBTQ youth in crisis. The Trevor Project promotes acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth to help in crisis and suicide prevention within that group.
Their helpline is available 24/7: 866-488-7386
- Why is it important to have a crisis and suicide center specifically for LGBTQ youth?
- Why do you think young people in the LGBTQ community get to a point of crisis? What kind of issues are your callers dealing with?
- What do you say to LGBTQ youth thinking about suicide?
- If your friend is thinking about suicide, what should you say?
- Why aren't people talking about suicide and LGBTQ issues, given what a huge problem it is?
- How can schools be more accommodating to LGBTQ youth?
- What can young people get their schools do to put an end to it?
- Why do you care about this cause?
- What’s been the hardest thing about your job at The Trevor Project?
- What's the hardest part of working on the Helpline?
- How does your work inspire you?
To put it simply, it’s statistical but powerful. Lesbian and gay youth are four time more likely to have suicidal ideations and more likely to commit suicide than their hetero peers.
They have so many other risk factors – discrimination they face at school, rejection at home, in their communities, rejection in their religious communities. They have so much more that they have to deal with. The biggest factors are discrimination and rejection – not being accepted, not accepting yourself for who you are.
We get a lot of calls from young people who live in the middle of nowhere, their parents don’t accept them or they’re afraid to come out to their parent, or they’re in unsafe situations (they’ve seen other people who have come out and either been beaten up or verbally abused). And it starts in schools.
The most important thing is creating a safe space. They need to know someone is there. It's simple, but huge.
On the Trevor Helpline, within 3 to 5 minutes we ask are you thinking of killing yourself? Then we initiate a rescue. If someone calls and before we even ask the risk assessment question, and they’re thinking of hurting themselves we initiate a rescue and all of our counselors are trained with how to do that – it’s a smooth process and all of our rescues usually turn out for the best.
We always ask these classes that we go into, if you see all these signs (signs of depression, risk factors for suicide), would you ask your friend or acquaintance straight-up ‘are you thinking about this?’ Across the board students say absolutely not. It’s crazy. And studies show it’s better to ask. So ask!
Simply by asking someone who’s showing all these signs you’re creating a safe space for that person to feel comfortable expressing themselves in a nonjudgmental arena. Just let them know it’s ok to talk about it. If you don't feel like asking, you can go to a guidance counselor and get them involved.
It’s still so taboo. Words are lethal and as a gay kid, you hear things and you deal with it but sometimes it’s too much. LGBTQ issues –it’s still not great for young people, they have to deal with so much institutionalized discrimination. A lot of times teachers aren’t allowed to address these issues with these students.
Get a workshop in there! Have us in your school. Start your own conversation. It’s really interesting to see, the students don’t get a chance to talk about these issues. Groups like the Trevor Project can come in and get the conversation started.
Young people are smart, they know what teachers they can trust, what teacher they can’t. If you’re in a school where you feel like all of the teachers are homophobic or not accepting of different identities maybe find someone in your community that. In schools there’s usually at least one person they can talk to, a guidance counselor. Ask if they can put up a flag, leave pamphlets, create a place in school where people can talk about this stuff.
Students’ words have a lot to do with it. Your words can be lethal.
The Trevor Project has an exercise where we start off by saying, what are words when you think of the word gay…people start throwing words, once the list is finished sometimes it’ more than 50 words, all of them are negative.
The same thing with the phrase “that’s so gay,” all the words you replace gay with are negative. The biggest thing is to understand the impact of your words. As much as people think it’s accepted to be gay, that it’s normal and OK, the people out there who are hearing these words all these times,that makes it feel not OK to them, the words are all bad.
Gay-straight alliances are a step in the right direction. Educating teachers and getting them to talk about it is key.
The top things: Learn the impact of your words, create safe space for your friends.
As a member of the LGBTQ community, it’s something I’ve always been interested in and I’ve wanted to work with young people, empowering them to take control of their surroundings and sexuality.. Young people aren’t always allowed to make decisions about their sexuality, they can’t really talk about it.
And now, I have the opportunity to talk to young people open and honestly and non-judgmentally about their sexuality.
The hardest part about working on the helpline is you get off the phone and You don’t know what happens after. Maybe it didn’t go great, and the person still felt lost and confused. You just want to run to their house and take them out of their situation and you can’t. You can get burnt out by that.
The other side of it, having those amazing calls and talking to such a huge range of young people, hearing their stories and struggles and I’m always amazed at how intelligent they are.
I love the calls when they’re comfortable in their own skin and they’re like why aren’t other people ok with it>I love when people want to start gay-straight alliances and want our resources. The call-backs from people who were thinking of suicide and then worked through it and de-escalated and they call back a day, month, year later and say thank you. It’s a great reason to come to work everyday.
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