Narritive

The mental health crisis in the LGBTQ+ community is continuing to be an ongoing issue. According to The Trevor Project in 2024, 39% of young queer people had contemplated or planned a suicide attempt. This is significantly higher than the national percentage of 12.6% reported by the National Institute of Mental Health in 2024. 

This crisis is something that you can directly help mitigate. Also according to The Trevor Project LGBTQ+ youth living in accepting communities attempted suicide at less than a third of the rate of those living in unaccepting communities. With this in consideration, the best way for an individual to help someone in a mental crisis is to make sure they feel supported. Some of the ways that the LGBTQ+ community have reported helped them feel supported are when the people around them trust that they know who they are (88%), don’t support politicians that advocate for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation (85%), stand up for them (80%), respect their pronouns (72%), support how they express their gender (69%), look up things about LGBTQ+ identities on their own to better understand them (67%), accept their partner or partners (60%), ask questions about LGBTQ+ identities to better understand them (60%), show support on social media (41%), and when they have or display pride flags (41%).

While this can help individuals, this may not be entirely helpful as it doesn’t remove the source of a lot of things that can cause the LGBTQ+ community to have mental crises. The vast majority (90%) of young LGBTQ+ people report stress and  anxieties about LGBTQ+-related policies, laws, and debates. Additionally, 78% said it made them feel unsafe and 76% said it negatively impacted their mental health. These laws have also made 32% of LGBTQ+ people or their families consider moving to a different state. 

While some issues require more input to affect, there are issues that can be worked on that are on a slightly smaller scale.  In a school setting, 83% of young LGBTQ+ people have noticed negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people and 32% have been verbally harassed because other people thought they were part of the LGBTQ+ community. This leads to 46% of all young LGBTQ+ people reporting that they had experienced discrimination, 29% about their sexual orientation and 48% about their gender identity.  Additionally 12% of LGBTQ+ students reported they had been physically threatened or harmed because of their sexual orientation and 23% of trans and non-binary students reported the same. It is important to reduce bullying and harassment because young LGBTQ+ people who reported being subjected to conversion therapy, bullied, or physically threatened or harmed or discriminated were three times as likely to attempt suicide.

In order to discourage harmful words and behavior towards the LGBTQ+ community, it is important to create a space for the  LGBTQ+ community to feel safe. In addition to the methods mentioned earlier, there are other ways to help make  LGBTQ+ feel comfortable and that you are a safe person to interact with. Some of these ways include introducing yourself with your name and pronouns as well as encouraging others to as well. This helps because it shows that you care to learn about them and that you are not assuming their gender or pronouns based on their appearance. Similarly, displaying items or showing behavior that show your allyship can show that you are a safe person as well. This could be something such as wearing a pronoun button, displaying a flag, or displaying a poster of an LGBTQ+ film or artist. Behaviors that can show your allyship are things such as talking positively about LGBTQ+ people and about LGBTQ+ history and achievements in conversation. 

 The way that I chose to depict this in the quilt block was to have two figures being affected by the words of the people around them and the negative impact it leaves on them. The dark reds and black represent the poor mental state that discriminatory actions directed at LGBTQ+ people can cause. Both of the figures are displayed with two flags. The top figure, she will be referred to as Figure 1, has the transfeminine flag around the outside of her form. Transfeminine describes someone whose gender identity is female or feminine-aligned while their assigned sex is not. The identity stitched on the inside of Figure 1 is the lesbian flag. Lesbian describes someone who is not a man and is exclusively attracted to people who are not men. The phrase affecting her is "It's just a phase," which is harmful to trans and queer people because it shows that you don't believe that they know who they are. The identity around the figure at the bottom, he will be referred to as Figure 2, is aroace, or aromantic asexual. This identity describes someone who experiences little to no romantic or sexual attraction to anyone. The identity around the inside of Figure 2 is the demiboy flag. Demiboy is a nonbinary identity that describes someone who identifies partially as a man but not fully. The phrase that is affecting them is "You will find the right person," which is harmful as there isn't necessarily a "right person" for them.

References

“Chosen Name Use is Linked to Reduced Depressive Symptoms, Suicidal Ideation and Behavior among Transgender Youth.” n.d. PMC. Accessed September 10, 2026. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6165713/.

“Creating Safer Spaces in Schools for LGBTQ+ Young People.” n.d. The Trevor Project. Accessed September 10, 2026. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/guide/creating-safer-spaces-in-schools-for-lgbtq-young-people/.

“LGBTQ+ Communities and Mental Health.” n.d. Mental Health America. Accessed September 10, 2026. https://mhanational.org/resources/lgbtq-communities-and-mental-health/.

“Suicide - National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).” n.d. National Institute of Mental Health. Accessed September 10, 2026. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.

“The Trevor Project 2025 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People.” n.d. The Trevor Project. Accessed September 10, 2026. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2025/#subsection-638be397-0e71-406f-88fa-17330df11621.

“2024 National Survey on LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health.” n.d. The Trevor Project. Accessed September 10, 2026. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2024/.