Content warning: This article discusses suicide and risk factors for suicide.
For years after my friend Erin’s suicide, I wondered if there was something I could have done to prevent it.
We lived in the residential hallways of a campus ministry building together when it happened; Erin was a junior, and I was a sophomore. At 20, she had been questioning her sexuality—I imagine that living in an actual church hadn’t made this process any easier for her, nor had her upbringing in a conservative North Carolina town. Erin had also been mentally ill. After she died, I wanted a clear, coherent explanation for her catastrophic absence. I wanted someone, something to blame instead of myself.
But mental health can be profoundly complicated. There isn’t always a clear explanation when someone takes their own life, and survivors are often left with messy, complicated grief. It is true that Erin died because she was mentally ill. It’s also true that being young and queer significantly increases the risk of suicide, especially in the South. According to the Trevor Project, LGBTQ+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their peers. In the length of time that it takes you to read this article, there will have been several more attempts: every 45 seconds, at least one LGBTQ+ young person attempts suicide in the U.S.
Bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, and LGBTQ+ youth of color are particularly at risk of attempting suicide, highlighting the fact that mental health must be seen through an intersectional lens. Multiple dimensions of our identities and the social, political, and physical environments we live in impact our mental health and well-being. Climate change is emerging as yet another critical threat to young people’s mental health, and it is already clear that it will impact the LGBTQ+ community in unique ways.
TELL CONGRESS: SUPPORT MENTAL WELLNESS RESOURCES FOR COMMUNITIES HIT BY CLIMATE DISASTER
Research has shown that, like other marginalized groups, LGBTQ+ individuals are at greater risk of exposure to the harms of climate change for several reasons. One is geography: an April 2024 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA based on the 2020 U.S. Census found that LGBTQ+ individuals in same-sex partnerships are disproportionately located in coastal areas and cities that are vulnerable to climate threats like sea-level rise, hurricanes, and extreme heat. (The report acknowledges that it likely reflects a sample that may be less racial, economically, and gender diverse than the LGBTQ+ population as a whole, but census data on same-sex couples is one of the best available measures for researchers.) LGBTQ+ people are also disproportionately located in western states with large, LGBTQ+-friendly cities like San Francisco and Seattle—cities at elevated risk for wildfires and the accompanying harms of wildfire smoke.
Second, structural inequities mean that LGBTQ+ individuals are more likely to live and work in risk-prone areas, in part because of existing economic and other disparities. According to a recent U.S. Census survey, gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals were much more likely to have been displaced from their home in the previous year because of a natural disaster than their straight, cisgender peers. LGBTQ+ youth have a 2.2 times greater risk of homelessness than non-LGBTQ+ young people, often due to family rejection or social discrimination. Homeless youth face greater exposure to climate threats like extreme heat and air pollution, both of which have been linked to increased suicide risk and other adverse mental health impacts. Extreme heat can interfere with many medications used to treat mental illness, including the kind of medications my friend Erin took.
The LGBTQ+ population also has poorer mental health overall than the general population, a disparity climate change will only further exploit. Because of the stress of living with ongoing social and structural discrimination, lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults are more than twice as likely as their straight peers to experience a mental health condition. Transgender adults are more than four times as likely to experience mental health challenges as cisgender individuals.
LGBTQ+ young people deserve better odds for their older years than this.
More than two decades after Erin’s death, I now see suicide prevention as a collective responsibility that requires both political and personal action. Climate change makes this action more critical than ever. We can fight for inclusive policies at the federal, state, and local levels, advocating for legislative actions that protect LGBTQ+ communities from discrimination. We can raise awareness of the ways that climate change disproportionately impacts LGBTQ+ and other marginalized populations, and fight for equitable access to mental health care and disaster recovery services. We can work to create inclusive, welcoming environments in our schools, workplaces, and faith communities.
And we can learn about suicide prevention and how to better support suicide survivors. It is a devastating truth that we won’t be able to prevent every death, but there is much we can do to improve the odds that LGBTQ+ youth will want to live in a changing climate. Every single one of these lives matters.
If you or someone you love is considering suicide, please dial 988 to reach the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit https://988lifeline.org/. To learn more about suicide prevention, consider becoming trained in the QPR method.
Learn more about Moms’ work on mental health.
TELL CONGRESS: SUPPORT MENTAL WELLNESS RESOURCES FOR COMMUNITIES HIT BY CLIMATE DISASTER