The past year or so has been difficult for just about everyone, but it has been an especially challenging time for groups of people that were already facing unique mental health challenges, such as the LGBTQ community.

LGBTQ Youth Mental Health Survey

The Trevor Project 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health collected data on how the past year of living through the COVID-19 pandemic has had on LGBTQ youth. What they found provided a glimpse into the experiences and difficulties that they were going through and how many of them contemplated ending their lives as a result.

Here are some key findings:

1. Researchers found that 42% of LGBTQ youth seriously contemplated killing themselves, including more than half of transgender and non-binary youths. Of those, 12% of white youth attempted suicide, 21% of Black youth, 21% of multiracial youth, 18% of Latinx youth, and 12% of Asian/Pacific Islander youth.
2. Seventy percent of people surveyed said they categorized their mental health as “poor” during most if not all of the past year, and over 80% of LGBTQ youth surveyed stated that the pandemic had made their living situation more stressful, especially since only about one-third of those surveyed said that their household was LGBTQ supporting.
3. Aside from the obvious increase in stress caused by a deadly disease that killed more than half a million people, the political situation during 2020 was also noted as a major source of stress in the LGBTQ community: 94% of respondents to the survey reported that recent politics had negatively impacted their mental health.
4. For transgender and non-binary youths, the survey found that one of the largest factors that affected suicide attempts was if people in their household were willing to respect their pronouns. Those who did not have their pronouns respected were found to have attempted suicide at double the rate of those whose pronouns were respected.

The mission of The Trevor Project’s Research Department is to produce and use innovative research that brings new knowledge and clinical implications to the field of suicidology and LGBTQ youth mental health. The complete survey results along with the methodology used to conduct the survey can be found here.

How You Can Get the Help You Need

Perhaps one of the most disturbing findings in the survey was that 48% of respondents said that they would have wanted to get counseling from a mental health professional but could not gain access to one during the past year. In times of mental crisis and instability, access to appropriate mental health professionals can sometimes quite literally be the difference between life and death.

At the Law Offices of Skip Simpson, our team has the experience, expertise, and knowledge to investigate the circumstances of suicide and help families and loved ones get through what is an extraordinarily difficult time. We serve clients nationwide, so if you have a loved one who was part of the LGBTQ community who died by suicide after receiving inadequate mental health care or harassment for their lifestyle choice, contact attorney Skip Simpson today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2021 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.