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Mental health matters

LGBT+ People and COVID-19

It goes without saying that COVID-19 has affected everybody in one way or another around the world, and continues to do so. The LGBT+ community have been hard it by COVID-19 some of whom already experience long term inequalities and research studies clearly evidence that LGBT+ people have less favourable health outcomes than their heterosexual counterparts, eg:

LGBT in Britain, Stonewall, 2018
LGBT+ Health Inequalities, UK Parliament, 2018

These impacts have increased markedly under COVID-19 as LGBT+ people have virtually no access to their (street) communities, and (already stretched) LGBT+ services and mainstream services. Currently, research/ studies are limited but evidence identified strongly indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the mental health of LGBT+ people living in the UK.

The pandemic’s impact on UK’s LGBT+ communities, UK Research and Innovation, Nov 2021
The experiences of UK LGBT+ communities during the COVID-19 pandemic: A review of evidence, NatCen Social Research, 9 Nov 2021

Specifically, increased anxiety and depression and feelings of isolation and loneliness; increased domestic abuse, and increased substance misuse with relapses from sobriety; the loss of queer safe spaces, supportive identity-affirming peer-groups, including scene venues (declining in Greater London). This echoes local intelligence gathered by GMHC during the lockdowns when we added additional mental health content, repeatedly signposted to services still open via social media - at a time when visitor numbers doubled.

With this in mind, we have also pulled together articles about how COVID-19 has affected LGBT+ people though we should also say that we have also been resilient, imaginative, inclusive, and supportive in ways we could not have imagined in 2019.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the LGBT community | Wikipedia

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