America’s youth are surrounded by politics like never before. It’s on their televisions, it’s going viral on social media, and, in terms of what is no longer said, it’s the elephant in their classroom.
LGBTQ+ youth specifically know the weight of these political conversations as they are often the focus.
President Donald Trump and other Republicans have weaponized the transgender community. They spent hundreds of millions in campaign ads to push forward agendas which sought to restrict the rights of transgender adults and children.
During Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he went out of his way to attack gender-affirming care for youth. “ And now I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning, criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body. This is a big lie.”
Today, with Trump in office, the president has signed multiple executive orders directly targeting medical access for transgender youth, their safe spaces in schools, what sports they can play, and more.
In a newly released study, The Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ young people, found that recent politics played a major role in young people’s mental well-being.
Speaking with Daily Kos, The Trevor Project’s Vice President of Research Dr. Ronita Nath explained that, in their findings children who lived in states with “hostile or restrictive” politics typically reported higher rates of suicidal or depressive thoughts.
“Even among states with supported LGBTQ+ policies, LGBTQ+ youth continue to face elevated suicide risk and high rates of anti-LGBTQ+ victimization,” she added. “Which makes it clear that communities all across the country need to take action to better support the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ youth.”
The Trevor Project’s newly released survey interviewed over 18,000 people between the ages of 13-24 in late 2023. At that time, Trump’s barrage of executive orders hadn’t hit the Oval Office yet but his incessant anti-trans campaign ads and hostile ideologies had already permeated the campaign trail.
As these children were being backed into a corner by a tense political environment, nearly half of the LGBTQ+ youth in every state reported that they didn’t have access to mental health care. The reasons varied widely from state to state, with some youth reporting that they were “afraid to talk about their mental health concerns with someone else,” while others said that they “couldn’t afford it” or that they didn’t feel comfortable speaking to their parents about it.
It’s clear LGBTQ+ youth not only are feeling directly impacted by hostile federal or state policies, but they don’t seem to have the means to help themselves either.
Those in the South in particular reported having the highest rates of wanting mental health care but being unable to access it, including 63% of South Carolina’s survey takers and 60% of Texas’ youth.
“Our work is about people, not about politics,” Nath told us. “But we strongly encourage all lawmakers and community leaders, regardless of personal political beliefs, to champion policies that support and protect the health, the well-being and safety of all young people, including LGBTQ+ young people.”
The Trevor Project’s latest national survey comes at a time when Trump has all but wiped transgender people from federal acknowledgement.
Trump removed “x” gender markers from passports, declared the country only has two gendersand wiped federal websites of anything containing information with anything pertaining to transgender people or “gender identity.”
More so, Trump has threatened to pull schools’ funding should they include things like “gender identity” or safe spaces in their classrooms.
But as Trump seeks to wipe away the existence of transgender youth, Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black emphasized that LGBTQ+ people are not the problem—it’s the aggressors.
“Similar to previous research, these data reinforce that LGBTQ+ youth are not disproportionately impacted by suicide because of who they are, but rather, because of how they are mistreated, stigmatized and discriminated against,” Black said in a statement provided to Daily Kos.
“This is an incredibly difficult time for many LGBTQ+ young people—and these findings give us critical insight into the unique challenges they face in every state. We hope lawmakers, advocates, youth-serving professionals, and allies in every corner of the country use this research to better understand and support the young people in their communities.”
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