According to a study published last week, “young people who identify as LGBTQ+ were less likely to report symptoms of depression when they had general support from their parents,” NPR reports.

The study, published by UT Austin researchers in the Child Development journal, asked  536 LGBTQ+ youth to answer “how often their parents did things like say how proud they were of them or assisted them with activities.”

They also asked whether their parents or guardians were aware of their LGBTQ+ identity, and whether their “parents exhibited any psychologically controlling behavior, such as asserting their beliefs as the correct ones.”

The results? “Our research showed that those who felt greater social support from parents tended to have fewer depressive symptoms, whereas those who reported greater psychological control from parents had more depressive symptoms,” reported Amy McCurdy, a postdoctoral scholar at The University of Texas at Austin. “For youth whose parents did not know their LGBTQ identities, having a combination of high psychological control and high social support from parents was linked with greater depressive symptoms.”

In other related news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the results of a 2021 survey of high schoolers that found that 22% of LGBTQ+ teens reported experiencing sexual violence in the past year. Not only that but 52% of LGBTQ+ teens reported experiencing poor mental health in the year prior, “with 1 in 5 saying they had attempted suicide during that period of time.”

Read the NPR article here.

Read the CDC Risk Behavior Survey 2011-2021 in its entirety here.

Photo by Sophie Emeny on Unsplash