2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health

A quantitative cross-sectional design was used to collect data through an online survey platform between September 20 and December 31, 2021. A sample of individuals ages 13 to 24 who resided in the United States was recruited via targeted ads on social media. No recruitment was conducted via The Trevor Project’s website or social media channels. Respondents were defined as being LGBTQ if they identified with a sexual orientation other than straight/heterosexual, a gender identity other than cisgender, or both. In order to ensure the representativeness of the sample, targeted recruitment was conducted to ensure adequate sample sizes with respect to geography, gender identity, and race/ethnicity. Qualified respondents completed a secure online questionnaire that included a maximum of 143 questions. Questions on considering and attempting suicide in the past year were taken from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey to allow for comparisons to their nationally representative sample. Each question related to mental health and suicide was preceded by a message stating, “If at any time you need to talk to someone about your mental health or thoughts of suicide, please call The Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386.”

Although 114,288 individuals from unique IP addresses began the survey, 30,976 did not complete the initial demographic screening questions, and 38,484 were screened out based on ages outside of the sample range and residency outside of the United States. This resulted in an eligible sample of 44,828 LGBTQ youth ages 13-24. A validity check was placed midway through the survey which asked participants to select “agree” from a five-point statement with answers ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Youth who did not select “agree” (n=918) or who did not reach the validity question in the mid-point of the survey (n=9506) were removed from the analytic sample. Additionally, 194 indicated that they weren't honest in their responses, and 217 were identified as mischievous responders based on written responses. This resulted in a final analytic sample of 33,993 LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 24 who resided in the United States.

This report uses “transgender and nonbinary” as an umbrella term to encompass non-cisgender youth, which includes young people who identify as transgender and nonbinary as well as other labels outside of the cisgender binary, including genderqueer, agender, genderfluid, gender neutral, bigender, androgynous, and gender non-conforming, among others.

Comparability

In order to better understand how our sample compares to a national probabilistic sample, we included questions regarding considering and attempting suicide that were identical to those used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS).

Analyses were conducted to compare rates of seriously considering suicide and attempting suicide in the past 12 months among youth ages 13 to 18 in our sample to the 2019 YRBS sample of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) high school students.

YRBS prevalence rates among LGB youth for seriously considering suicide (47%) were comparable to rates among the same age range in our sample (49%).

Additionally, 23% of LGBT youth in the 2019 YRBS reported a suicide attempt in the past 12 months compared to 17% in our sample of youth ages 13-18.