Whilst facilitating the theme of Gender Equality at the World Youth Conference in Sri Lanka, I was personally pleased to hear the demand from lots of youth to consider the needs and situations of LGBT* individuals in a future development agenda. It was thought early on that those needs would most likely not be included in the outcome document of the event - negotiated by governments and youth, there are many states who do not want to see it in there (yet many others who do). In fact sexual orientation was the very last term to be removed from the document before agreement.
But regardless of that text, there were important discussions to be had and talking about the subject brought new perspectives to youth and government officials from across the world. The issue brief published ahead of the conference for the health strand contained the following fact:
"About 20% of adolescents will experience a mental health problem, with suicide being one of the leading causes of death in young people."
This wasn't linked in the brief to any particular causes, but from my personal experiences this is a key issue for LGBT* youth. I'm writing this on the flight home so I can't access the information to give statistics, but people are far more than just numbers. I know myself how it feels to be made out as 'not normal' on a daily basis, even in a country like the UK where the legal mechanisms are in place, and that can cause a whole host of mental health problems.
My Story
Almost exactly 10 years ago I dropped out of school. Aged 13, I was depressed, I was suicidal, and it is only thanks to my supportive family that I continued my education from home and improved my mental health. At that point in my life I didn't understand my sexuality or my gender identity but I felt "different". On a regular basis I faced comments and taunts based on what others perceived - my peers told me constantly that I should have been born a boy. Week after week, month after month, as a teenager I started to believe that and saw it as an unrepairable fault in me as a person. The media, songs, stories, television all supported this notion - a binary system where I definitely didn't identify with the portrayal of women. It's all very well to tell young people to stand up for themselves when being bullied, but what do you do when you think they are telling the truth? The words make you so deeply unhappy because your telling them to yourself too.
The internet was part if the problem - binary genders present across the web and plenty of homophobia cropping up more and more as websites became participatory. But it was also part of the solution. By using the internet I was able to find information (sites like Stonewall and Scarleteen) and other people going through the same (these were pre-Facebook times when live journals and MySpace were the in thing). When you find 4 or 5 people who are different in a similar way to you, the world is a much less bleak place, even if they live a long way away.
Solutions
So what can we do to improve the mental health of LGBT* teenagers today? Campaigns like "It Gets Better" and Stonewall's latest ad addressing homophobic bullying have a role to play. Messages of diversity and acceptance beyond the binary gender system are growing within the media that teenagers consume regularly, though there is still room for improvement.
We need to provide activities in formal and non-formal education that reinforce these messages of acceptance too. One of our rapporteurs, the vital note takers, for the gender equality strand of the conference gave me a copy of a resource from IFM SEI (http://ifm-sei.org/toolbox/rainbow-resources). It is filled with age-appropriate activities to approach the subjects of gender identity and sexual orientation with groups of children and young people. You can find a copy of the resource here.
How else can we foster a culture of acceptance and improve the mental health of young people?
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