Findings from a recent survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth, show transgender, gay and nonbinary teens have worse mental health than their peers—and school policies targeting them contribute to their mental health struggles.
Parsing education data into snack-sized servings.
The data comes from the Trevor Project’s 2024 national survey on mental health, gathered from more than 28,500 LGBTQ+ young people in the United States. Now in its sixth year, the survey gives researchers a comprehensive look at the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth. One bright spot: there is strong evidence that supportive actions by the adults in their lives have a measurable impact on the mental health of LGBTQ+ young people, according to senior researcher Jonah DeChants.
One positive finding from the Trevor Project’s data is that the rate of depression and anxiety reported among LGBTQ+ youth is slightly lower in 18- to 24-year-olds than among adolescents 13 to 17.
Two hypotheses on the dip are that LGBTQ+ youth simply have more control over their lives and are able to express themselves more freely after 18, DeChants explains, and that mental health generally improves as people mature.
The survey participants said they wanted their parents and caregivers in particular to be kind and speak respectfully of their LGBTQ+ friends and partners, support their gender expression, respect their pronouns and learn about LGBTQ+ issues.
The same is true when students attend schools with what DeChants calls affirming policies, like having a gender-neutral bathroom or a chapter of the Genders the Sexualities Alliances.
Just 6 percent of trans and nonbinary youth said their caregivers took part in all the supportive behaviors that applied to them.
About 60 percent said their caregivers did about half of the supportive actions, and 17 percent said their caregivers did none.
Researchers found that “an increase of just one supportive action from parents and caregivers was associated with 6 percent lower odds of a suicide attempt in the past year.”
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