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MENTAL HEALTH LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR (LGBT) YOUTH
Published fal eded form as:PMCID: PMC4887282NIHMSID: NIHMS789458AbstractToday’s lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr (LGBT) youth e out at younger ag, and public support for LGBT issu has dramatilly creased, so why do LGBT youth ntue to be at high risk for promised mental health? Keywords: LGBT, sexual orientatn, genr inty, youthINTRODUCTIONIn the perd of only two s, there has been dramatic emergence of public and scientific awarens of lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr (LGBT) liv and issu.
This awarens n be traced to larger soccultural shifts unrstandgs of sexual and genr inti, cludg the emergence of the “gay rights” movement the 1970s and the advent of HIV/AIDS the 1980s. Yet the first public and rearch attentn to young LGBTs foced explicly on mental health: A small number of studi the 1980s began to intify ncerng rat of reported suicidal behavr among “gay” youth, and a US feral report on “gay youth suici” (Gibson 1989) beme ntroversial both polics and rearch (Rsell 2003). Most of the knowledge base has foced on sexual inti (and historilly mostly on gay and lbian inti), wh much ls empiril study of mental health among transgenr or genr-nonnformg youth.
Historil trends social acceptance the Uned Stat show, for example, that 43% of US adults agreed that “gay or lbian relatns between nsentg adults should be legal” 1977; by 2013 that number had grown to 66% (Gallup 2015). 2014) sum, chang societal acceptance of LGBT people have ma g out possible for ntemporary youth, yet the age of g out now tersects wh the velopmental perd characterized by potentially tense terpersonal and social regulatn of genr and sexualy, cludg homophobia.