Windham County LGBTQ+ YRBS Data: A Community in Need of Support

Trigger warning: Mental Health, Suicide

Since 1993 the Vermont Health Department and the Vermont Agency of Education have sponsored a biannual Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS)¹. According to the Health Department, the survey was developed to “monitor priority health risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disease, injury, and social problems among youth.” At Thrives, this data is a pivotal part of our work. It helps to inform us on how often students are abusing substances and gives us insights as to why they might be seeking comfort and solace from drugs rather than using other outlets to cope.

Recently, the YRBS data 2017-2019 for Windham county was released**. One of the first things our team noticed in this data was the drastic discrepancy between LGBTQ+ youth substance use and that of their Het/CIS* peers. As evidenced in Chart 1 below, LGBTQ+ students appeared to be almost twice as likely as their peers to use various substances.

*Het/Cis stands for Heterosexual and Cisgender. Meaning that an individual identifies as straight and that their gender matches their birth sex.

Chart 1

YRBS 2019 Indicator	Windham LGBT Youth	Windham Het/CIS* Youth
Smoked a cigarette before age 13	15%	6%
Ever misused a prescription drug	22%	12%
Ever used cocaine	8%	3%

This data is significant considering that at least 16% of Windham Counties youth identified as LGBT at the time the YRBS was taken. However, it is important to note that while there is a stark contrast substance use amongst LGBTQ+ youth and their peers in our county, someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity does not inherently make them abuse substances. Rather, the data suggest that substance rates are higher amongst youth who identify as LGBTQ+ because of a lack of community support in Windham County. As Chart 2 below illustrates, LGBTQ+ youth in Windham County do not feel as wanted in their community, feel less safe at school, and are more likely to be the victims of bullying.This result is congruent with a study published in Addictive Behaviors Reports where they found that “lower social support is linked with higher lifetime alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco use.”²

Chart 2

YRBS 2019 Indicator	Windham LGBT Youth	Windham Het/CIS Youth
Strongly agree or agree that in their community they feel like they matter to people	34%	60%
Did not go to school because they felt unsafe, past 30 days	15%	6%
Were electronically bullied, past year	32%	12%

As Chart 3 below shows, this lack of community support systems has had profound mental health impacts on our Countys LGBTQ+ Youth. These mental health issues drastically increase a youths likelihood to develop a substance abuse disorder in their lifetime. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse “mental illness may precede a substance use disorder, suggesting that better diagnosis of youth mental illness may help reduce comorbidity.”³ Simply put, if we want to lower youth substance abuse rates in Windham County we need to provide LGBTQ+ youth with more community support systems in an effort to encourage positive mental health outcomes for one of our county’s most vulnerable populations.

Chart 3

YRBS 2019 Indicator	Windham LGBT Youth	Windham Het/CIS Youth
Felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that they stopped doing usual activities, past year	62%	25%
Did something to purposely hurt themselves without wanting to die, past year	52%	11%
Attempted suicide, past year	20%	8%

Stay tuned for Thrives to share more details on how we plan to help support our LGBTQ+ youth, and how we can all take simple actions to help make LGBTQ+ youth feel wanted, loved, and like they are the valued community members that they are.

**The Windham County YRBS data can be found here. Simply follow the link and scroll down to the County level data section.

References:

Windham County LGBTQ+ YRBS Data: A Community in Need of Support

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