More than 1 in 10 LGBTQ youth say they attempted suicide last year: Poll

More than 1 in 10 LGBTQ youth said they have attempted suicide in the past year, according to a new survey.

The survey from The Trevor Project found 12 percent of LGBTQ youth aged 13 to 24 said they attempted suicide in the past year. Thirty-nine percent of the same group said they “seriously considered attempting suicide in the last year,” alongside 46 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth.

“Once again, this year’s survey shows that considering or attempting suicide is not uncommon among LGBTQ+ young people,” said Ronita Nath, vice president of research at The Trevor Project, in a press release for the survey. 

“However, many of the contributing risk factors for suicide are preventable, and often rooted in victimizing behaviors of others,” Nath continued. “The results of this survey clearly identify a need for adults and allies to create more affirming environments for LGBTQ+ young people, and better support them in being their true selves.”

Other findings in the survey included 90 percent of LGBTQ youth saying their “well-being was being negatively impacted” because of “recent politics.”

Another recent report from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that 93 percent of transgender teens from the ages of 13 to 17 live in states where there are laws or proposed laws “banning access to gender-affirming care, participation in sports, use of bathrooms and other sex-separated facilities, or affirmation of gender through pronoun use.” 

“Much of our efforts to address the public health crisis of suicide among LGBTQ+ young people are made that much harder by the ongoing wave of anti-LGBTQ+ policies pushed by extremist lawmakers across the country,” said Janson Wu, senior director of state advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, in the press release.

The survey was conducted from Sept. 13 to Dec. 16 and featured 18,663 LGBTQ people aged 13 to 24 in the U.S. It has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.