suicide prevention

Everything News

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September 11, 2026

Montgomery is talking about suicide prevention. we should listen.

A new WSFA report puts Suicide Prevention Month in very local terms: Montgomery families living with grief, bullying, and the work of… Read more

If you need support right now: call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. LGBTQ+ young people can also contact The Trevor Project by calling 1-866-488-7386, texting START to 678-678, or using online chat.

there is a version of suicide-prevention messaging that stays safely abstract: a ribbon, a statistic, a phone number, a sentence about checking on your friends. all useful. all very easy to nod at and keep scrolling.

then there is the version where the people telling you to pay attention live down the road.

WSFA spoke with two Montgomery women this week about the losses that pushed them into suicide-prevention advocacy. Angela Jackson described the shame and isolation that followed a suicide in her family. Monique Davis talked about her son, Jamari Terrell Williams, who died in 2017 at age 10 after being bullied.

Jamari loved to dance. Davis told WSFA that classmates treated him as different because of it, and that difference became a target.

that detail lands hard because “different” is one of those words adults can make sound harmless after the fact. kids know exactly how it gets weaponized.

sometimes support is not a slogan. sometimes it is staying nearby while somebody makes the call.

“different” should not become a warning label

yesterday i wrote about why queer and trans kids deserve to grow old. this is not the same story, and i do not want to flatten Jamari’s life into an identity the reporting does not give him.

but there is an obvious point of contact: children who get marked as different are often asked to absorb an astonishing amount of cruelty while the adults around them debate whether the cruelty technically meets the threshold for intervention.

Jamari’s mother did not leave that debate where she found it. she created the Jamari Terrell Williams Foundation, which works with schools, churches, city officials, and community groups to fight bullying and prevent suicide. Alabama’s student-harassment law was renamed for Jamari in 2018 and expanded protections around bullying, including cyberbullying.

the foundation’s message is wonderfully uncomplicated: it is okay to be different.

the future we are trying to protect is mostly ordinary: friends, community, bad haircuts, errands, and getting to be here for all of it.

the local part matters

WSFA also reports that Alabama loses at least two people to suicide on an average day, and that nearly 840 Alabamians died by suicide in 2024. those numbers are large enough to become scenery if you let them.

the reason local stories matter is that they turn the scenery back into people.

a mother in Montgomery is still saying her son’s name. a city employee is talking openly about grief she once felt ashamed to discuss. a foundation here is still going into schools and churches telling kids that being different is not a problem to solve.

and this Saturday, Montgomery Parks and Recreation is hosting a Suicide Awareness Resource Fair from 4 to 6 p.m., connecting people with counselors, mental-health professionals, information, and community resources.

that is what “check on your people” looks like when it stops being a caption and becomes infrastructure.

call. text. ask the second question. take bullying seriously before it becomes somebody else’s origin story for advocacy.

Resources: Call or text 988 for free, confidential crisis support 24/7. Learn more about the Jamari Terrell Williams Foundation. LGBTQ+ young people can contact The Trevor Project 24/7.
Everything

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September 10, 2026

queer and trans kids deserve to grow old

on world suicide prevention day, the specialized 988 service for LGBTQ+ youth is still offline. queer and trans kids deserve more than… Read more

If you need support right now: in the U.S., call or text 988, or use the chat at 988lifeline.org. LGBTQ+ young people can also call 1-866-488-7386, text START to 678-678, or chat with The Trevor Project. Both services are available 24/7.

happy world suicide prevention day to everyone except the administration that saw a dedicated crisis line keeping queer kids alive and decided THAT was the waste of government spending to cut? trans and queer kids deserve to grow old. check on your friends, donate, and stay alive
— schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-10T20:17:52.499Z

i posted this today because apparently World Suicide Prevention Day now requires a small asterisk.

the country still has 988. you can call it. you can text it. a counselor will answer, and that matters. but the dedicated “Press 3” service that connected LGBTQ+ young people with specially trained counselors ended on July 17, 2025. the 988 Lifeline’s own FAQ still says the LGBTQ+ subnetwork is closed.

Congress has since directed $33 million toward bringing specialized service back. in June, the Associated Press reported that the administration intends to relaunch it by the end of 2026, although the Trevor Project—the organization that helped build the service and handled about half of its 1.6 million contacts—may be excluded from the new network.

so, on suicide prevention day, the dedicated service is currently a promise with an end-of-year deadline. an extremely federal form of hope: please remain in crisis until the procurement process concludes.

staying alive is not an endorsement

to the queer and trans kids who keep receiving the message that their existence is a budget problem, a political issue, a school-board agenda item, or an awkward subject adults would prefer to discuss without them: you do not have to become inspirational about any of this.

you do not owe the world a triumphant speech. you do not have to forgive anybody. you do not have to prove that pain made you stronger, or turn survival into a tasteful before-and-after photo.

you are allowed to stay alive because you love someone. because someone loves you. because your cat would be confused. because a game comes out next month. because you still need to hear one particular song live. because spite is renewable energy. because the version of you five years from now is doing something extremely ordinary and does not yet know how hard you worked to get them there.

staying alive is not an endorsement of the conditions you are surviving. it is refusing to let those conditions write the ending.

check on your people like you mean it

“reach out if you need anything” is a kind sentiment and a terrible user interface. ask the second question. send food. sit on the phone. help make the appointment. offer a ride. stay while they text a counselor. if somebody tells you they are thinking about suicide, take them seriously, ask directly whether they are in immediate danger, and help connect them with crisis support.

and if you have money, donate to the places still doing the work. The Trevor Project continues to provide free, confidential, affirming crisis care around the clock without the federal Press 3 contract. institutions love to describe community care as resilience after they have finished making it necessary.

queer and trans kids deserve adulthood. boring errands. ugly apartments. friends who become family. jobs they complain about. haircuts they regret. group chats that outlive three phones. the chance to discover that growing up does not solve everything, but it does make the world larger than the room where somebody first told them they were wrong.

stay alive. stay long enough to become inconvenient evidence that they failed to erase you.

Need help now? Call or text 988. LGBTQ+ young people can contact The Trevor Project by calling 1-866-488-7386, texting START to 678-678, or using online chat. If there is immediate physical danger, call emergency services or go to the nearest emergency department.