Glitude

Nearly half of multiracial LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered su***de in the past year.

Those are the new findings in a report published this month by the LGBTQ+ youth mental health organization the Trevor Project.

It’s been well established that LGBTQ+ youth are at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and su***de attempts compared with their straight and cisgender counterparts. But according to the Trevor Project, this research is among the first to consider how the intersectionality of identifying with more than one ethnic or racial identity affects su***de risk.

“To our knowledge, this new report is the first of its kind to exclusively explore the mental health and well-being of multiracial youth who are LGBTQ, highlighting their unique mental health experiences, risk factors, and protective factors,” says Myeshia Price, PhD, the director of research science at the Trevor Project, who is a coauthor of the report.

For the new research, 33,993 LGBTQ individuals ages 13 to 24 answered online surveys in late 2021; 4,379 reported that they identified with more than one race or ethnicity.

Across nearly all the questions about feelings of anxiety and depression, suicidal thoughts, and su***de attempts, the young people who identified as multiracial were at higher risk than those who identified as monoracial. In most cases, those who identified as exclusively a youth of color had a higher risk than those who identified as white and another race or ethnicity.

The data showed that when it came to su***de risk:

48 percent of the multiracial youth reported seriously considering su***de within the past year, compared with 44 percent of those who identified as monoracial
17 percent of the multiracial youth reported attempting su***de within the past year, compared with 14 percent of those who identified as monoracial