Being LGBTQ Doesn't Cause Mental Health Struggles. Rejection Does. Here's What Parents Need to Know.

Today we're talking about the reality of LGBTQ+ mental health and why this conversation matters now more than ever before. Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast helping parents of LGBTQ+ kids move from fear to fierce allyship and feel less alone and more informed so you can protect what matters, raise brave kids, and spark collective change. I'm Heather Hester. I'm Heather Hester. Let's get started. In this episode, you'll learn the unique challenges LGBTQ+ individuals face in accessing safe, affirming mental health care. You'll learn what parents, allies, and friends can do to support better outcomes. And you'll learn the resources and practices that truly make a difference. And at the end, I'll answer one of the most damaging myths I hear about LGBTQ+ youth and mental health, one that needs to be unlearned today. So let's get into it. Let me start with a hard truth. Being LGBTQ+ is not what causes mental health struggles. Let me say that again. Being LGBTQ+ is not what causes mental health struggles. Yet, how often have you heard people say, well, of course they're depressed, they're gay, or trans kids are just more troubled? No, that is not the truth. The pain doesn't come from their identity. From who they are. It comes from rejection, silence, stigma, daily microaggressions. I want you to imagine just for a moment how it must feel for an LGBTQ+ person in today's society, in today's world. Seriously, I want you to take a moment right now. Close your eyes, as long as you aren't driving, and put yourself in your child's shoes or your friend's shoes. Really see and feel their humanity. Imagine their heart. Take a deep inhale and a long exhale. And for this moment, do your best to connect to another human's experience. I asked you to do this quick exercise because it shows exactly why affirmation and safe spaces are not luxuries. They're not talking points. They're life-saving. LGBTQ+ youth are more than 4 times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers. Let that sink in for a minute. 4 times more likely. Nearly half of all transgender and non-binary youth have seriously considered suicide in the past year. These aren't abstract numbers or just statistics. These are kids sitting in classrooms right now. Kids walking down hallways, walking by your child, perhaps. Perhaps they are your child. These are kids sitting at family dinner tables. This is potentially your kid or my kid or one of their friends. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that there are also higher rates of anxiety and depression among LGBTQ+ youth and adults. So why am I telling you this? Well, I'm telling you because I want you to understand that LGBTQ+ folks aren't more likely to attempt suicide because they are LGBTQ+. It is because of the stigma, the rejection, the bullying, the lack of access to affirming care. It is because of what they face in the world each and every day. It is because of the microaggressions, they experience at school or in the workplace or just walking down the street. I'm telling you this because I want you to understand that family rejection is the single biggest predictor of poor mental health outcomes. Not shocking, really, but I want you to take a moment And try to imagine what it might feel like for your family, the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally, to not accept or affirm, or in some cases even be around you just because of who you are. And I'm telling you this because I want you to understand that just one supportive adult can lower the risk of suicide by nearly 40%. So what can we do? Well, the first thing we can do is be affirming. We can take simple steps like affirming all children. Did you know that using a child's chosen name and pronouns reduces depression and suicide risk. We tend to make this so much more difficult than it actually is. You don't need to fully have your head wrapped around it, fully have worked through whatever you need to work through. And that's okay. There are no judgments in that statement, but you don't need to be fully through all of your things to be able to use a child's chosen name, to understand the importance of that name to them, to understand the importance of pronouns to them. This isn't about you. This is about them. And this is such an easy step that we can take. This isn't political as so, so many who are driven by fear and who also happen to possibly be followers of the great cult leader in the Oval. This is medical. This is science. This is deeply, deeply human. What is an example of what this might look like in action? Well, one example could be a trans teen whose school counselor consistently affirms them often experiences higher self-esteem and lower anxiety, even if their family support is lacking. The second thing we can do is make sure that there is access, access to therapy, but therapy only helps if it's affirming. Non-affirming care, or worse, conversion therapy creates more harm than good. When looking for a therapist for yourself or your child, or as an ally, Always ask, "What is your experience working with LGBTQ+ clients?" And allies, please advocate for schools and communities to offer inclusive mental health services. I know, I know, I know there are a lot of hot-button terms and phrases that will get us all flagged or canceled right now. So going forward, let's use the phrase "human first" to talk about these things. Finally, understand that community can be so healing. Belonging is above all a protective factor. Youth groups, GSA clubs, Even online communities, when they are moderated, can help combat isolation and help build resilience. So what does this look like in action? Well, it can look like a lonely queer teen who attends a local LGBTQ+ youth group who reports a higher self-worth even if they only go once a month. When I think back to the moment in time for each of my kids when they could really feel, and when I could really see the impact of the right kind of support on their mental health, my breath still catches a little bit, and I can still feel the relief begin to spread through my body. Over and over again. I cannot overstate the powerful, life-saving difference the right support has made for each one of them, really each one of us. What has worked has been different for each one of them, and their responses have shown up in different ways. But the through line has been the empowerment and then the confidence that has resulted from having mental health support. So when we talk about LGBTQ+ mental health, we're really talking about the difference between despair and hope, between silence and affirmation. And for so many, that's the difference between life and death. I want to take a moment right now just to reflect on this topic a little bit in a way that is unscripted. This is something that I tried out a little bit in the last episode and would like to try out again today because I think that responding to specifically these topics that can be heavy, that can be scary, that can bring up so many different emotions for us. While are very important to have facts and good solid information and tools that come with them, I think it's also really, really important to have these real moments of lived experience. And I think one of the biggest things that I felt compare— compelled to share today was just how steep our learning curve was to figure this out. I did not come out of the gates knowing all of this information. Nor could I talk about it in a way that was calm or that made sense, or frankly, without crying. When I first realized that I needed mental health support was thankfully a few years before Connor came out, but I remember sitting in this workshop that a friend had dragged me along to, and it was a workshop on self-care. And I remember thinking, what an odd phrase. I'd never really heard that term used. This was probably about 10 years ago, maybe 10 or 11 years ago. And so I was, but I was intrigued and I remember sitting and that workshop with her the whole time thinking, oh my gosh, I can do this. I'm allowed to take care of myself. I'm allowed to take a minute to, you know, do whatever it is, to take a breath, to prioritize my needs. Oh my gosh. I mean, there were so many things and I know that sounds perhaps silly to you, that you think that I'm, I'm exaggerating. I promise you I'm not. This was a huge, huge, big deal for me. And that person who led the workshop actually ended up becoming my therapist and she has been my therapist for the past 10 years. And I am so grateful because that is also, that is something that I didn't know that I could do. That being an option was just something that was so new to me, new, so foreign to me. And so the, when I say my learning curve and our learning curve, I'm not kidding. I mean, I was starting at like way below zero as far as knowledge of mental health and, and the ability to understand my own and care for my own, let alone support my children's. So I, to this day, uh, am so grateful that I had at least a 2-year head start to begin to learn about myself and to learn how to begin to, you know, heal and unwind so many things so that when Connor did come out and the wheels all fell off the bus, that we were able to, you know, my husband and I were able to at least communicate more quickly. And we did, you know, we had started to have an idea of resources, people to talk to. It was still a really, really steep learning curve. And of course, as you can imagine, and as I'm sure you have experienced, What a grown adult woman might need for therapy and mental health support is going to be far different than what a teenage boy might need when he is coming out as gay. So I just wanted to share all of that with you, just so you know that you're not alone wherever you are in this process, on this journey, whatever it is that you are needing or looking for. Just know that there are resources, and I cannot encourage you more strongly to reach out. If you need help, if you have questions, that is what I am here for. And that is what— there are so many communities and advocates and allies out there. That is what we are all here to do. Ask. Lean into the help. It is there. So if you've been with me for a while, you know that I have absolutely loved doing the Listener Query segment because it's been such a great way to answer your questions and to bust myths that are out there. And I began thinking while I was traveling a few weeks ago that What if we could take that same curiosity and make it even more action-focused? So starting next week, we are evolving the Listener Query segment into something I'm going to call The Unlearn. Each episode, I will tackle one common myth or bias or assumption, something that we have been taught to believe And together we will break it down. We will reimagine what can be possible and end up with one tangible action you can take right away. It will still be grounded in your questions and your stories. So please continue to send those to me, but going forward, it will be a part of your weekly practice, your allyship practice. So get ready to unlearn, reimagine, and act. So we're gonna kind of practice this a little bit today, and this might be a little bit bumpy, so hang in there with me. But I thought this might be a fun way to take both the listener query and the unlearn, the idea of the unlearn. For busting the myth that I alluded to earlier. This is a really persistent myth that I hear, and it is that LGBTQ+ mental health struggles come from being LGBTQ+. So this myth, like we talked about earlier, is, you know, many storylines, but it is a similar theme that being queer means that you are destined for depression or despair or anxiety or fill in the blank for a mental health struggle. The truth is that mental health struggles for LGBTQ+ people are about the world's rejection of them. It's not about their identity. It is about what they face every single day in the world. I was doing a talk a few months ago, and in my talk, I was going over the pieces of what it looks like to show up as an ally. And I was— I had a lot of statistics in this talk that I was sharing. And at the end, someone said, well, my child didn't need to come out and they've never struggled because we just made our home so safe and accepting that they just didn't have that need, which is lovely and beautiful and wonderful. And, and I wanted them to know that because it is, it, it is a huge thing. For one to feel that way. However, that gave me the opportunity to really talk about the difference between, or not even the difference between, but really what happens when we create these environments in our home and then our children go off into the world, right? They leave high school and they go off to college or they go off to the working world, they go off to trade school, whatever it might be. And they're in the world and they're facing the world. Well, that's a whole different thing than being inside our safe cocoon of home or the safe bubble that we've created at home. So I think that's why— that is one of the many reasons why it is really important to talk very specifically about the reality of mental health struggles for LGBTQ+ people why they occur, what they face out in the world, all of the different pieces that they are facing still to this day, even more so than probably a year ago, what we can do to support them, all of these tools that we share on here, and, and what we can do just as a community to bring awareness and support. So This week, I want you to reach out to an LGBTQ+ friend or loved one and simply say, "I'm so glad that you are you." When we unlearn these harmful myths, we open the door for healing, not only for ourselves, but for all of those around us. I know there was a lot packed in today again, and I know that it can be overwhelming to wrap your head around the unique challenges that LGBTQ+ individuals face in accessing safe and affirming mental health care. But I hope that learning what parents and allies and friends can do to support better outcomes as well as resources and practices that truly make a difference are helpful for you and your family on your journey. Mental health is not separate from dignity and safety and love. And when we affirm, we save lives. I'm so grateful that you were here today for caring enough to learn and to act. Remember that new episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday, so make sure to subscribe so you never miss one. And if today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to give you an excerpt of my book, Parenting with Pride, along with a guided reflection. Go to tinyurl.com/pwpreflect that this will also be in the show notes. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.