Trying to engage in good faith: would you likewise say that the notion of sports medicine is irrelevant? That even though professional athletes have unique stresses on parts of their bodies that are not common in a general population, unique levels of societal pressure around accelerating their recovery time, and a need for rapid real-time diagnostics... a generalist physician would be as effective as a specialist?

Now imagine you're running a massive sports team, and you have a budget for medical care. But then a government entity comes and says: regardless of outcomes, you're not allowed to hire specialists or allow your team members to elect to go to specialists, because that could be seen as unfair... regardless of whether statistics point to improved outcomes if you were allowed to have certain specialists.

Looping back to suicide hotlines: even if the administration had increased funding to the hotline to compensate for the ended specialist program (which is highly unlikely, and that this was more likely a net funding loss) - it's a similar restriction on whether a lifeline program can allocate resources to specialists. And the stakes here couldn't be higher.

(And if statistics pointed to other groups benefiting similarly from specialization, I’d want a clinician-led organization to evaluate that research and determine budget allocation towards those specialists, too.)

> A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way

The data suggest otherwise [1].

Which makes sense. “For LGBTQ youth, risk factors such as bullying, abuse, negative family treatment, as well as negative emotions caused by anti-LGBTQ legislation have also been identified” [2]. If you’re in a community that’s tolerating all of that, your trust in generic institutions will be low.

> any more than Black or Asian or Indian cases

If a population is disproportionately committing suicide, they should be disproportionately resourced. “Native Americans and non-Hispanic White Americans” have “the highest suicide rate in the United States” [3].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30109965/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBTQ_people

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#S...

Different people face different challenges, and helping them requires different strategies. You really don't think that there's anything unique about the challenges LGBTQ people face?

> There doesn't need to be a specialist for every group, or worse - some groups.

Why? The struggles different groups generally face are not the same. For a hotline for veterans, wouldn't it make sense to have counselors who are either veterans themselves or have worked extensively with veterans and their specific patterns of issues?

What is this assumption based on? It sounds political.

Are LGBTQ people at a higher risk for suicide? Could hotline staff reduce suicide attempts with special training? Seems like you could measure this.

Thinking about other groups with a higher risk--veterans, abuse survivors, gambling addicts--are there suicide prevention programs for these groups and are they effective?

If a trans kid calls the suicide hotline and the volunteer suggests they stop wearing dresses to school so people won't bully them, I'm pretty sure the outcome will be far worse than anyone intended. There should be specialists who know how to handle specific kinds of callers.

By that logic, pediatricians and gynecologists shouldn't exist.

> A national hotline that can handle anyone is clearly the right way.

Absolutely. That describes this setup. You call the number. You get help. Sometimes that means a person trained in, say, talking to rape victims. (If you go to the ER, they'll have a nurse trained in it too!)

Per the article: "Also known as the 'Press 3 option,' the program gave 988 callers the option to 'press 3' to connect with a counselor trained to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youths and young adults (they could also text 988 with the word 'PRIDE'). Nearly 1.5 million contacts were routed to the LGBTQ service since its launch, according to data available on the SAMHSA website."

Same hotline, just a phone tree option in it.

Specialization is useful in pretty much all human endeavors. It would be extremely strange if this was an exception.

That decision should be left to the people who study and understand psychology, not laymen, podcast hosts, and politicians.

Look, I get that you are approaching this in good faith, assuming that they cut these specialists because it was redundant and inefficient.

If this were 10 years ago, this would be an understandable assumption, but today there is absolutely zero reason to reach this conclusion.

The words of our own elected representatives make it very clear why these specialists were cut: because of hatred for the LGBTQ+ community.