It’s the end of October and the Queerantine study has been up and running for 6 months (we can barely believe it!). A huge thank you if you helped to spread the word about the survey…and an even bigger THANK YOU if you completed the survey. You may be wondering what we have been doing with the information you shared with us to promote the case for greater investment in support for LGBTQ+ health and wellbeing during COVID-19? So we’re going to tell you…
Drumming up interest and getting the first paper out
We started with getting the word out about the Queerantine study in the first place. We set up Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and asked a number of organisations including ELOP, the National LGB&T Partnership, and the LGBT Foundation to feature the survey in their newsletters. We published a blog on Discover Society with Harri Weeks, then at the National LGB&T Partnership, where we highlighted why we were conducting the Queerantine Study. We also enlisted the awesome Jo Boyce to help drum up interest in the survey with her infographics and gifs – one of which was been watched over 3200 times!
By July we had enough data to start working on the first paper that would report our findings and we focussed our attention on highlighting the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of the LGBTQ+ community. The data suggested that the pandemic had a pernicious impact on LGBTQ+ mental health, with seven-in-ten of us exhibiting significant depressive symptomology. We also found high levels of anxiety among the sample, and observed that LGBTQ+ people had continued to face substantial levels of discrimination throughout the pandemic. This discrimination had exacerbated the risk of depressive symptomology – those who had experienced discrimination (almost a fifth of respondents) were more likely to be depressed and anxious. We published these findings in a journal article, but we didn’t want this information to stay within academia so we worked with the brilliant David Batty from the Guardian to ensure the findings reached the community, practitioners, and policy-makers . David gave the issue the attention it deserved – with an article in The Guardian highlighting that LGBTQ+ community’s mental health was taking a hit during the pandemic, and that this was not being considered by policy-makers.
Making waves and posting aubergines
The Guardian story was published on August 5th with the headline ‘Lockdown having 'pernicious impact' on LGBT community's mental health’ and for a short time even made it onto the headlines section of the webpage! The story was covered in a number of national outlets including the Metro, MSN, as well as international outlets (e.g. in Greece and Australia). But we were most pleased when it received coverage in LGBTQ+ outlets such as LGBTQNation and the PinkNews – we were hoping that the story would let people who were finding things hard know that they weren’t alone in the way they felt and that support was out there. We saw the findings being used to start conversations about mental health and COVID-19 across the community.
We were really pleased to see that this article led to frank discussions around mental health issues among our community. These experiences were discussed by many on twitter - and even from an account with some seriously ‘fruity’ content (i.e. many aubergines!) belonging to an adult film star. We were happy to be able to contribute to these discussions, and so glad to see that a follower with such big reach (no pun intended) was able to share his experiences of lockdown with his followers so eloquently and stimulate further conversations. Long may these frank discussions continue.
We also took the findings ‘stateside’ through discussing the findings on the LGBT Wellness Roundup podcast. We discussed the findings at length on a radio show, Understanding Each Other, hosted by the inspiring Kenya Scarlett, and have shared findings from respondents in London with ThriveLDN, a citywide movement to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all Londoners.
If these conversations are particularly relevant for you, and you are finding things hard with mental health or other issues at the moment, please know you’re not alone. And if you’re struggling do reach out to some of the support services provided by the community including the LGBT Foundation, London Friend, LGBT Switchboard, the organisations that are part of the National LGB&T Partnership, or the many local organisations that are part of the LGBT Consortium.
What’s next?
There’s still so much to do. We are entering lockdowns in the UK and in several other countries once again, and there hasn’t been any tangible support for our communities from the government. LGBTQ+ charities are working around the clock to help and support us, and they need support from government and public health agencies. There is still little attention paid to these issues, and we need concrete investment in either support services to address the stark inequalities in health and wellbeing that exist based on sexuality and gender, or research that casts a light on the impact of the pandemic on LGBTQ+ people.
From our end, we continue to collect responses, and will start to analyse the data further to get a better understanding of the impact of the pandemic on LGBTQ+ people. Our next papers are in progress so watch this space!
If you have read to this point in the blog entry, we will congratulate you for your reading stamina (!), and ask you for two favours:
(i) If you have not completed the survey yet, please do so by clicking on the link: https://uclioe.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2rYiknW9sdzCszr. Data collection is still ongoing and seems particularly important as many parts of the UK and the world are entering a second wave of COVID-19 and a second lockdown.
(ii) Please help to spread the word about the survey and the first findings and make the case for greater investment in support for the community.
The category is getting stuff done…and we have some work to do. Thank you for your support!
Dylan and Laia