The COVID-19 pandemic presented its own hurdles, but what might have been unexpected in a post-pandemic world hasbeen the stark jump in demand for mental health-related services. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Angela Glymph, a South Carolina-based psychologist and CEO of Peer Health Exchange, said youth have been specifically impacted – perhaps more so than their older counterparts – by the isolation experienced during the pandemic.
“We’re in a youth mental health crisis,” she explained. “And when talking about young people who hold historically marginalized identities, this crisis just affects them disproportionately, more deeply, and that’s what we’re seeing right now.”
Over 40% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, according to a 2023 Trevor Project National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ People. In addition, 14% of LGBTQ young people attempted suicide in the past year and 56% of LGBTQ young people who wanted mental health care in the past year were not able to get it.
QNotes interviewed Dr. Glymph about working with youth in our community directly, to address the ongoing mental health crisis and determine what needs to be done to give them the resources they need.
Taylor Heeden Larkins: As a psychologist, what have you observed regarding mental health in young people, specifically LGBTQ+ and/or people of color?
Dr. Angela Glymph: The statistics are really alarming. We know that LGBTQ+ young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers. We also know that if we break that down, we know the rates increase when we’re talking about trans youth.
And then to your point, we add another layer of young people of color, specifically Black youth, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation have more than doubled for these young people in the past few years, mostly coming out of the pandemic.
THL: Why do you think that’s the case?
AG: It points to a couple of things. One, there is a huge access gap in terms of health [care] overall, but specifically with mental health. In other words, it is very difficult for young people, no matter what identities they hold, to find mental health treatment. Because if you look at it on the provider side, there is sort of this gap in providers who are providing youth specific mental health treatment. There’s already this small pool.
Then when you talk about access, we look at young people of color or young people who hold marginalized identities. We know just from what we understand about health equity, there is a disparity in terms of them being able to utilize the resources, whether that’s because of income, whether that’s because of availability in their communities or also some of the social psychological things like mental health stigma, especially in communities of color, that provides these barriers to access to care.
Number two: When we’re thinking about young people or people in general that hold identities that are typically marginalized, when they do receive care or when they decide to seek out care, they want culturally competent and responsive care and treatment. Unfortunately, what happens is in terms of training of these providers, that training is still not there in a robust way.
So we’re seeing that when there isn’t culturally competent care specifically in mental health, that’s a barrier to people going back or even seeking the care that they need.
THL: There’s also been a stigma associated with mental health care and mental health disorders in general. How do you go about combating the societal stigma to help others find the care they need?
AG: To me the biggest barrier that we’re seeing is that, in my opinion, it’s a stigma. There’s a lot of stigma around mental health, around suicide [and] mental illness, that prevents young people specifically for asking for help for disclosing or talking about the challenges that they’re facing. Then that causes this isolation, and it causes them not to get the care they need.
I think there’s a lot of societal things going on right now, in this world, in this country, that also cause some of the anxiety that young people, specifically LGBTQ+ people, face.
I mean, let’s face it, understanding this political climate, the fact [is] there are laws that are actively being passed in states that say, ‘Your identity as a LGBTQ+ person isn’t important, doesn’t matter.’ There are laws that are restricting folks’ right to live and to get health care that they need. Young people are seeing this, they are aware of this and it’s giving them anxiety as well. So that is contributing, in my opinion, to this youth mental health crisis that we’re seeing and that young people are experiencing right now.
THL: Youth violence is also at an unprecedented high. How does mental health play a role in this?
AG: We’re seeing more acts of youth violence. Young people are more than aware, as they’re either victims of it directly or they’ve seen it or witnessed it in their communities. It creates a lot of anxiety, depression [and] ambiguity that is just hard to manage day to day. Then they have to navigate going to school and all of the pressures that come with being a young person in this world.
As I mentioned earlier, the political climate and what’s happening globally as it pertains to violence and war [has] just added burdens on young people that I believe is a source of [the] mental health challenge and strain right now.
THL: Your organization, Peer Health Exchange, works directly with young people to address mental health challenges. Can you talk about some of the work you do?
AG: We have historically been an organization that has provided peer health education in urban high schools across the country, and what that means is we train college-aged students to basically go in and teach mental health, sexual health and substance use prevention to high school students in different cities across the country.
It’s a comprehensive health education, so we don’t focus on just mental health; but post-COVID, we have been hearing directly from young people and educators in partner schools and school districts we work in that there is an increased need for mental health.
So in addition to that comprehensive curriculum we have developed, we also created a curriculum that is focused on mental, emotional and social well being. We have been running that for the past four years.
THL: Peer Health Exchange launched SELFSEA — a resource hub for teens across the country. Can you talk about it and how it has helped so far?
AG: It’s a free resource for young people designed by young people that we work with.
There were two things that they wanted specifically for us to do for them. They said they want access to mental health resources, want to know where they are and want to know how to connect to them.
[First,] they don’t want just any old mental health resources — they want mental health resources that affirm our identities, whether that is our racial identity, sexual identity or gender identity, we want resources that see us first and foremost.
Number two, they want a place where they are not feeling alone and isolated because the pandemic caused a lot of social isolation among young people. So they wanted to be able to know and understand that there are young people who have anxiety or depression and [are] really sharing stories about how they’re navigating through their health challenges.
And at the same, they’re sharing how they were experiencing their triumphs and finding ways to cope and finding ways to better their health.
So on SELFSEA, young people can go and they’ll see videos of young people who look like them from various identities, sexual orientations, backgrounds from all across the country sharing their stories specifically about mental health challenges, but also sexual health challenges.
They’re sharing what helped them, what resources were helpful to them and how they overcame some of the challenges they were experiencing.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.