2 in 5 LGBTQ Youth Considered Suicide in 2023
LGBTQ youth are more likely to experience persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, demonstrate suicidal ideation, and engage in riskier personal behaviors.
The latest annual iteration of a youth health survey finds that LGBTQ youth were more likely to suffer from poor mental health and, last year, were more likely to experience suicidal thoughts than their cisgender and heterosexual peers.
According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, published biennially by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than three in five LGBTQ high school students reported experiencing “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” with more than half reporting their mental health condition as “poor.”
The survey poses various questions to thousands of high school-age children, from public and private schools, between grades 9 through 12, across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. While past surveys had included data on sexual orientation, the 2023 survey was the first to include questions about respondents’ gender identities.
According to the survey, while nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ youth, or 65%, reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness during the past year, compared to 31% of cisgender and heterosexual peers. More than half of LGBTQ youth reported experiencing poor mental health in the past 30 days, compared to only 21% of cisgender or heterosexual peers.
The report also found that 41% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide over the past year, with 20% actually attempting suicide.
“Across all of those outcomes that we looked at, experience of violence, poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, we do see this really significant disparity between LGBTQ+ young people and their cisgender and heterosexual peers,” Dr. Kathleen Ethier, the director of the CDC’s division of adolescent and school health, told ABC News, which first reported the results. “That has been the case for a while.”
LGBTQ youth were more likely to experience violence than their peers, according to the survey. Twenty-nine percent of LGBQ+ students were bullied at school, compared to only 16% of heterosexual students. 1 in 4 LGBTQ students reported being electronically bullied over the past year, compared to 13% of heterosexual students. Additionally, LGBQ+ students almost twice as likely as their heterosexual peers to report that they had missed school in the past 30 days due to concerns for their own safety.
Even more disturbingly, LGBTQ youth were 2.5 times more likely to report being victimized by sexual violence by anyone as their heterosexual peers. LGBTQ youth were also more likely to report being forced to have sex, with 17% saying they had been victimized, compared with 6% of heterosexual youth.
LGBTQ youth are also more likely to engage in substance use than their peers. In 2023, 26% of LGBTQ students said they drank alcohol in the past 30 days, compared to 21% of cisgender and heterosexual students. Additionally, 25% of LGBTQ students reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, compared with 14% of cisgender and heterosexual students.
The report found that 18% of LGBTQ students reported having misused prescription opioids and 15% reported having used illicit drugs at some point in their lives. By comparison, only 8% of cisgender and heterosexual students said they had ever engaged in similar drug-taking behaviors. In terms of ongoing drug abuse, 7% of LGBTQ students reported misusing opioids like codeine, Vicodin, OxyContin, Hydrocodone or Percocet in the past 30 days — more than double the 3% of cisgender and heterosexual students reporting opioid misuse during that same time period.
The survey also revealed data about LGBTQ youths’ sexual behavior. While nearly identical percentages of LGBTQ youth and cisgender and heterosexual youth reported ever having engaged in sex (1 in 3) or being sexually active (about 1 in 5), a majority of the latter group reported having used a condom in sex, compared to only 44% of LGBTQ youth.
The CDC said in the report that schools that have implemented policies to support LGBTQ students have seen improved mental health outcomes and less suicidal ideation among those youth, as well as among their heterosexual and cisgender peers. Specifically, students in more welcoming environments engaged in less risky sexual behavior, decreased marijuana use, decreases in students missing school due to safety concerns, and decreases in experiences of forced sex.
“[W]e know that there are things that their schools could be doing to make them feel safer and more supported, and that when their schools do that, not only do LGBTQ+ young people do better, but their heterosexual peers do better as well,” Ethier told ABC News. “And so, we are really focused on making sure that we can do everything that we can do to get those effective policies and practices out there for schools and so that they can create better environments for those young people.”
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