State numbers show nearly a quarter of LGBTQ youth have attempted suicide. The numbers come in a year when lawmakers filed more than two dozen bills with anti-LGBTQ+ themes.
Nearly 23 percent of Hoosier high school students who identify as LGBTQ have attempted suicide, according to this year’s Kids Count Data Book. This compares to nine percent their heterosexual peers.
Taylor Johnson is the Policy and Data Advocacy Manager at the Indiana Youth Institute. He said, “22.7 percent of high school LGBTQ students with futures, with family, with promise, with value, attempted to kill themselves in 2021.
“This far too often results in a cost that is not counted in economic terms, but is counted through the loss of a child’s possibilities, their future, and far, far too often their life.”
Lawmakers filed more than two dozen bills this session with anti-LGBTQ themes. The previous high was seven.
They have already passed a measure to ban medicinal and surgical gender-affirming care for transgender youth this session. The state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and other anti-LGBTQ legislation are still moving through the Statehouse.
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Laura Janney heads Muncie OUTreach, which works with LGBTQ youth. She says these kids need to know Indiana is “greater than the hate it shows.”
“They need to know that there are affirming adults that support them,” she said. “But also, our rural kids are in a hot mess, because they don’t have the ability to find that liberal bubble of support.”
Kids Count data also shows the state has nowhere near the number of school support staff – like counselors, psychologists, and social work – that the US recommends.
Johnson said, “Throughout the state, we have four-and-a-half times more students per [school] psychologist and 11 times more students per social worker when we compare it to the recommended ratios.”
He added these school staff “can provide valuable resources to provide the ability for students to process and cope with many of the problems that our students are facing.”
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The same goes for mental health providers in general. The US recommends one mental health provider for every 350 people in an area. Indiana has a ratio of one to 560.
In overall children’s health, Indiana ranks 31st in the country, moving up several spots this year.
