It’s been well established that LGBTQ+ youth are at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts compared with their straight and cisgender counterparts. But according to the Trevor Project, this research is among the first to consider how the intersectionality of identifying with more than one ethnic or racial identity affects suicide risk.
“To our knowledge, this new report is the first of its kind to exclusively explore the mental health and well-being of multiracial youth who are LGBTQ, highlighting their unique mental health experiences, risk factors, and protective factors,” says Myeshia Price, PhD, the director of research science at the Trevor Project, who is a co-author of the report.
Across nearly all the questions about feelings of anxiety and depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts, the young people who identified as multiracial were at higher risk than those who identified as monoracial. In most cases, those who identified as exclusively a youth of color had a higher risk than those who identified as white and another race or ethnicity.
The data also showed that multiracial youth were slightly more likely to report having had feelings of anxiety in the two weeks before taking the survey than monoracial youth (75 versus 72 percent). And among the multiracial youth, those who identified as exclusively a youth of color were slightly more likely to have such feelings than their peers who identified as white and another race or ethnicity.
“This work is also significant in that it explores the experiences of multiracial LGBTQ youth of color compared to multiracial LGBTQ youth, who may identify to some degree as white, which expands the conversations around white privilege and how it is experienced by these youth,” says Nicholas E. Grant, PhD.
Read more at EverydayHealth.com.
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