Mental health and the LGBTQ+ community

Mental health problems can and do effect everyone. However, they disproportionately seem to affect those within the LGBTQ+ community. This is not to say that being LGBTQ+ immediately gives an individual poor mental health but there is definitely a correlation between common mental health problems and being LGBTQ+.

In a study conducted by Youth Chances, 52 percent of the LGBTQ+ participants reported self-harming compared to 35 percent of their cisgender “straight” counterparts. The study also found that just under half of the participants (44 percent) reported having regular suicidal thoughts. Our own research report from 2021 showed that when asked “have you ever had any mental health, depression or suicidal thoughts” 42% of respondents replied yes (downloadable report from https://ig-cic.org.uk ). These initial sample results have led us to conduct further research during our current 2022 LGBTQ+ research for Watford to find out from a larger sample. If you would like to take part and are from the LGBTQ+ community or an ally, please visit https://ig-cic.org.uk to click on the 2022 link.

Furthermore, a report conducted by Stonewall UK found that 1 in 8 LGBTQ+ people (13 percent) attempted to take their own life within the last year. Just under half of the transgender participants (46 percent) reported thoughts of taking their own life within the last year compared to 31 percent of their cisgender piers.

So why is it that the LGBTQ+ community adversely affected by mental health issues? It is because they face a number of problems that our straight “cis” piers do not encounter. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is hate crime. According to a report written by Stonewall, experiencing a hate crime significantly increased an LGBTQ+ individual’s likelihood of developing mental health problems. The study found that 69 percent of LGBTQ+ victims of a hate crime reported experiencing depression and 76 percent reported experiencing extreme episodes of anxiety.

Again, using our own research from 2021, we saw that Watford disclosed that almost 32% of respondents had experienced hate crime and of those, the same percentage stated it happened in Watford. We will be comparing figures against both 2021 & 2022 to see if anything has improved or become worse at the end of our study during September this year (we hope to see you at Herts Pride on 20th August in Watford, if you would like to speak further in-person about any other issues).

LGBTQ+ young people are also significantly more likely to experience bullying at a higher rate than their heterosexual piers throughout their school career. In a school report conducted by Stonewall, they found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ pupils experienced some form of bullying as a result of their sexual orientation. Unfortunately, the mental fall out of this is more likely to disproportionately effect LGBTQ+ children of colour. In a study conducted by Just Like Us, of the Black young people surveyed 89 percent reported experiencing suicidal thoughts and feelings compared to 67 percent of their white LGBTQ+ piers. We are exploring older aged people’s experience and will release the new statistics from our own 2022 LGBTQ+ research in September.

Now that you have a more comprehensive idea of some of the additional issues LGBTQ+ people face and how this can contribute to the rise of mental health problems within the community, we at Impactful Governance hope you can understand why what we are doing is so important.

We wish to make the Watford area a more LGBTQ+ friendly place but to do that we need to prioritise and listen to the voices of its LGBTQ+ residents which is why we are conducting the current survey. While the questions pertaining to mental health and suicide may be viewed as invasive to some, it is a fact that the LGBTQ+ community experiences a higher rate of mental health problems than our cisgender straight counterparts. By addressing this in our latest research, we hope to spark a wider conversation on suicide prevention within the local LGBTQ+ community.