🔚 Bottom line:

LGBTQA+ students face significantly higher risks for mental health disorders and suicidality.
Prevention starts with inclusion, safety, and support — at home and on campus.

Read the full study here 👉 doi.org/10.1186/s128...
#MentalHealthMatters

🏫 Educational settings can play a key role in harm reduction

The study calls for:
✅ Inclusive policies
✅ Trauma-informed mental health support
✅ Anti-bullying interventions
✅ Early screening & support

📌 What predicts suicide attempts in LGBTQA+ students?

According to multivariate analysis:

Childhood trauma
Recent bullying
Self-harm

are all major risk factors — even more than depression or PTSD alone.

⚠️ Critically, LGBTQA+ students began experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts around age 12–13, earlier than heterosexual peers

This underlines the imperative for early intervention

🏠 Childhood adversities were strikingly common:

Physical abuse (6.3% vs 1.6%)
Emotional abuse (11.7% vs 2.6%)
Parental mental illness (11.1% vs 5.7%)
LGBTQA+ students were also less likely to feel emotionally close to family

🧠 51% of LGBTQA+ students had experienced probable PTSD

⚠️ 46.6% reported lifetime suicidal ideation

💔 14.2% had attempted suicide in their lifetime

These rates are significantly higher than for heterosexual students of the same age

📊 Key findings:

LGBTQA+ students were:

2x more likely to experience depression

2x more likely to engage in self-harm

3x more likely to have made a suicide plan
compared to heterosexual peers

Hi Willem, I’ve just dropped you an email about this and whether the post is flexible with hybrid/remote working. Very interested!

Practical things you can do as a Cis ally:

- Write to your MP
- Protest
- Give funds to Trans led advocacy groups
- Use whatever social capital you have to support your workplace, your kids schools, your communities to resist the erasure of Trans people from public life.

Thanks to my wonderful supervisors and co-authors @profsiobhanon.bsky.social and @susanlagdon.bsky.social

Ah thank you. Best of luck with your ethics assignment!