The isolation of COVID-19 lockdowns brought about a nearly 30% increase in demand for mental health services throughout the country. But for LGBTQ youth, the isolation and anxiety from the last year has only exacerbated preexisting mental health battles.
In 2020, 42% of young LGBTQ people — including more than half of transgender or nonbinary youths — considered suicide, according to a survey conducted from October to December 2020 by The Trevor Project, a national organization that provides crisis and suicide prevention to LGBTQ youth.
Out of those surveyed, 70% said that their mental health was “poor” during the pandemic; 48% said they wanted counseling in the past year but couldn’t get it, and only a third said their home was LGBTQ-friendly.
Jorge Membreño, director of clinical services at SMYAL, a D.C.-based organization that supports LGBTQ youth, said the “collective trauma” of the pandemic has only added to the difficulties their clients already face.
“You’ve got youth who have been consistently marginalized and have existed with trauma,” he said. “To have a pandemic like this happen is only going to increase that feeling of isolation.”
Safe spaces stripped away
Membreño said that the pandemic stripped away many physical safe spaces for LGBTQ youth and diminished their ability to build a supportive community, create healthy coping strategies and practice an authentic way of life.
“Our youth at [the start of the pandemic] are now being physically isolated from their environments that they are finding safety,” he said.
Many of the LGBTQ college students SMYAL works with had to leave their living situations and return to unaccepting and unsafe households, forcing them into isolation in a family or other living situation that was “rejecting or toxic,” Membreño said.
Membreño said that some were able to leave their living environments through SMYAL’s housing program for 18- to 24-year-olds in the D.C. area. But many had to stay in unsupportive environments.
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