No Laughing Matter

This blog post is all about facts. Some grim facts what LGBT+ people go through. All these statistics are from the excellent book by Juno Dawson - This Book Is Gay.

• One in six LGB people in the UK have experienced a hate crime or incident in the past three years.

• Young LGB people who are bullied are at higher risk of suicide, self-harm and depression. Forty-one percent have attempted or thought about taking their own life directly because of bullying, and the same number say they deliberately self-harm directly because of bullying.

• Forty-nine per cent of lesbian and bisexual girls report symptoms consistent with depression, compared to twenty-nine percent of gay and bisexual boys.

• One in seven gay and bisexual men (thirteen per cent) report moderate to severe depression, compared to seven percent of the general population.

• Within the past year, one in fourteen gay or bo men have harmed himself on purpose, this rises to one in five for gay and bi women.

• Young LGBT+ people are 190 percent more likely to misuse drugs and alcohol compared to straight youths. (University of Pittsburgh 2008)

• 59 percent of young trans people have considered suicide (Pace 2014)

Except here stated, all statistics courtesy of Stonewall - School Report 2012, Gay and Bisexual Men’s Mental Health Survey 2011, Homophobic Hate crime: The Gay British Crime Survey 2013.