In April 2020, LGBT HERO, the national health and wellbeing charity for LGBTQ+ people, surveyed over 2,300 LGBTQ+ people to see how they were doing mentally, physically and emotionally during lockdown. Did they have access to safe housing? Were they depressed or anxious? Could they access medical care?
The survey found that huge numbers of LGBTQ+ people were experiencing mental health problems; 43% were depressed ‘very often’ or ‘every day’ and 50% regularly felt anxious about the impact lockdown was having on their lives. Meanwhile, the young were experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, with 67% of under 18s saying they were lonely ‘very often’ or ‘every day’.
In March 2021, after 12 months in which some parts of the UK have always been in some form of lockdown, LGBT Hero created the One Year On survey. This year, LGBT Hero amended some of the questions, and added some that reflect the new situation such as the vaccination drive, and long-term lack of community connection. For important markers of wellbeing, however, the questions were kept the same, so as to make comparisons more easily. In total LGBT Hero received 2,273 responses. To see breakdown of who responsed CLICK HERE.
LGBT Hero said: “It should be noted that these results were collected through social media adverts targeted to LGBTQ+ communities as best we could. This resulted in data that was not evenly collected from all parts of the community, especially with regard to age where respondents were mostly young.
“We are aware that representation from people over 65 years old and people from minority backgrounds, particularly Asian communities, are not as high as we would have liked. However, the results presented gives a good snapshot of how our community has been affected since Covid began.”
Key Findings
• 35% (one in three) of respondents reported feeling suicidal
• 6% reported a suicide attempt
• Trans and gender diverse people were three times as likely to attempt suicide in the last year than cis people (12% vs 4%)
• 46% (almost half) of under 25s have felt suicidal in the past year
• 14% of under 18s have attempted suicide in the past year, of these, 53% were trans or gender diverse
Mental health
• 80% (four in five) LGBTQ+ people said that the latest lockdown had negatively affected their mental health
• Rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness all showed marginal downward trends over the same time last year
• 49% of LGBTQ+ people said the latest lockdown was harder than the first, versus 19% who thought the first was harder
Connecting with other LGBTQ+ people
• 14% of respondents said they had no contact with another LGBTQ+ person for over a month
• 17% of under 18s said they could express their sexual or gender identity all the time during lockdown
• 12% of respondents said they could never express their LGBTQ+ identity during lockdown
Coronavirus vaccine
• 82% of unvaccinated LGBTQ+ people indicated they would take the vaccine if offered
• 6% of LGBTQ+ people said they will not take the vaccine if offered to them
For all results and more info, CLICK HERE
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