After North Carolina’s Law, Trans Suicide Hotline Calls Double

Anti-transgender bathroom laws like North Carolina’s HB 2 are not just inconvenient for transgender people. They may also be life-threatening.

Greta Gustava Martela, co-founder of Trans Lifeline, a crisis hotline for transgender people, told The Daily Beast that their call volume has “nearly doubled” since North Carolina restricted the use of public bathrooms based on birth certificate gender markers.

“This would normally be a time of year when we would be on an upswing,” Martela told The Daily Beast, explaining that suicide prevalence generally rises in the spring, but to her the steepness of this increase is “indicative of some event happening, rather than the normal seasonal fluctuations.”

Trans Lifeline data shared with The Daily Beast shows that before Governor Pat McCrory signed HB 2 on March 23, the hotline’s daily volume peaked at around 200 incoming calls. After the law, the peaks started getting higher.

From April 8 to April 16, the most recent date included in the data set, the hotline has only seen two days below 200 incoming calls. On April 13, they received what Martela notes is an “unprecedented” 357 calls.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/20/after-north-carolina-s-law-trans-suicide-hotline-calls-double.html