2024 Perú National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People

A quantitative cross-sectional design was used to collect data through an online survey platform between October 24 and December 12, 2022. A sample of individuals ages 14 to 24 who resided in Perú was recruited via targeted ads on social media. No recruitment advertisements were posted onto The Trevor Project’s website or social media accounts. Respondents were defined as being LGBTQ+ if they identified with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual, a gender identity other than cisgender, or both. Recruitment was monitored to ensure adequate sample sizes with respect to age, region, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Qualified respondents completed a secure online questionnaire that included a maximum of 53 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. 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:” (“Si en algún momento necesitas hablar con alguien sobre tu salud mental o pensamientos suicidas, consulta esta lista de recursos:”) and a list of several Perú-based, LGBTQ+-affirming psychological chat and hotline services.

There were 12,425 respondents who consented to start the survey, whom we identified as unique respondents based on IP address and reported age, province of residence, sex assigned at birth, gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity. Of those, 989 were ineligible based on age (younger than 14 or older than 24 years) and country of residence (i.e., outside of Perú). An additional 1,494 respondents were pathed out for not meeting demographic requirements, 1,768 did not complete the demographic questions on sexual orientation and gender identity, and 687 were not LGBTQ+. This resulted in an eligible sample of 7,487 LGBTQ+ young people. We excluded any youth who did not reach the midpoint validity check on the survey (n=2,415), failed the validity check (n=378), or indicated that they had responded to almost none or only some of the questions honestly (n=51). The final analytic sample was 4,643 LGBTQ+ youth aged 14-24 years who resided in Perú.

Chi-square tests were used to examine differences between groups. Comparisons are statistically significant at p<0.05 unless otherwise noted, which means there was a < 5% likelihood of the results occurring by chance. In this slide deck and subsequent reports, only statistically significant findings are included.

This report uses “trans and nonbinary” as an umbrella term for all non-cisgender young people. This includes trans and nonbinary young people as well as genders beyond the cisgender binary (e.g., genderqueer, agender, genderfluid, gender neutral, bigender, and androgynous among others).

All analyses on family affluence in this report uses a quintile Family Affluence Scale (FAS). The raw composite FAS score (0-9, where 0 is least affluent and 9 is most affluent) is categorized uniformly into five groups: 0-1 (least affluent), 2-3 (less affluent), 4-5 (affluent), 6-7 (more affluent), and 8-9 (most affluent).

Geographic regions are coded as followed: “north” included Áncash, La Libertad, Piura, Cajamarca, Lambayeque, and Tumbes; “south” included Arequipa, Apurímac, Puno, Moquegua, Cusco, and Tacna; “central” included Ica, Junín, Ayacucho, Pasco, Huancavelica, Huánuco, and Lima Provincia; “jungle” included San Martín, Amazonas, Loreto, Ucayali, and Madre de Dios; “lima” included Lima metro and Callao.

Thank you to the LGBTQ+ young people who bravely shared their experiences – and to Damián Tapia Romero, Isabella Fernández Orellana, Matías Loayza Mendoza, Aslan Romero Villagarcia, Sahira Cruzado Chanamé, Alexandra Falla Pinto, Carla Rojas Arana, Ale Castro Villanueva, Sthepane Mishel Lozano Tocto, Fiorella Solis Baez, Andy Mendoza Larrañaga for their partnership in co-creating this first-of-its-kind Perú-based survey.

The authors of this microsite acknowledge and extend our deepest thanks to Dr. Myeshia Price, Dr. Will Cole, Eduardo Lara, Zach Eisenstein, and Lily Kofke for their contributions to the research.