Four In Five LGBT+ People Say Their Mental Health Has Worsened During Lockdown, New Survey Reveals
A new survey has revealed that the coronavirus lockdown has had a negative effect in LGBT+ people’s mental health. Women, trans people and people of colour were found to have the most negative impacts.
As ‘LGBTQ Nation’ reports, the survey, conducted by wellness website ‘OutLife’, asked 2,333 LGBT+ Facebook users about their depression, anxiety, loneliness and experiences with self-harm and abuse during the COVID-19 quarantine. Over 80% said their mental health had worsened since the start of the lockdown.
The amount of people rating their mental health as “poor” or “extremely poor” nearly doubled from 34 percent before the lockdown to 61 percent during the lockdown. Additionally, the people who felt depressed “very often” or “every day” rose from 24 percent to 43 percent, those experiencing anxiety “very often” or “every day” rose from 34 percent to 50 percent and people who regularly suffer from loneliness increased from 21 percent to 56 percent.
“Honestly don’t think my mental health has ever been worse than this,” a respondent named Freyja wrote. “I’ve been experiencing semi-frequent suicidal ideation which is not usual for me and before lockdown I hadn’t had a panic attack for months but now I have them every few days.”
Although the number of people experiencing self-harm has a slight increase of 3 percent, 46 percent of respondents had their medical access interrupted because of the lockdown, including access to therapy, regular medical visits and other managed care. Additionally, 33 percent of participants reported an increase in alcohol use.
This survey has shed some light to how the quarantine has worsened mental illness to the LGBT+ community, which has been a result of isolating Queer people in their homes, locking away people who are not yet out of the closest with their unaccepting parents, receding the LGBT+ community’s access to mental healthcare and social support networks while at the same time creating worries about money while a number of businesses remain shutdown.
Psychologists have called mental illness “an epidemic within the coronavirus pandemic.” While raising awareness of the issue is an important step, the survey’s author says the decline in mental health is likely to have effects that last years after the quarantine ends.
“It’s important that we future proof our [mental health] support systems to make sure we can better respond to those who need it,” said Ian Howley, the Chief Executive of LGBT HERO, the parent organization of ‘OutLife’. “It’s our recommendation that we build these support systems now rather than later.”
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Read related myGwork articles here:
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