International LGBTQ youth in RIGA!

More that thirty LGBTQ youth activists gathered in Riga on December 3 at the 20th IGLYO annual conference to discuss mental health issues among LGBT communities. A wide range of European countries was represented, from Portugal to Moldova, from United Kingdom to Malta.
This event was a great opportunity for LGBTQ youth activists to stress the importance of focusing more on mental health. Indeed, surveys show that LGBTQ youth people are more vulnerable than the mainstream youth population to stress, depression, suicide thoughts, suicidal attempts, suicide, drugs and alcohol abuse. Discrimination, stigma, hetero-normativity are causes of the minority stress, which increases the vulnerability to mental ill health.
Most of participants underlined also the importance of paying more attention the transgender mental health due to the specific problems encountered by transgender people.

Although mental health is often considered as a specialized field of interest reserved for psychologists and psychiatrists, it does not include exclusively mental disorders but also stress, low self-esteem, internalised homophobia. Nevertheless in many countries the association between mental health and ill health persists and people who address mental health services are sometimes still stigmatized.
Participants at the conference agreed on a definition of mental health that includes a positive dimension: a safe environment where LGBTQ people feel free to come out and where they could live their private life without being discriminated against or harassed.
It follows that prevention is a key area to be taken into account and participants were very well aware of the need for a multiple-direction engagement in the field of mental health undertaken by as many different stakeholders as policy makers, LGBT communities, general population, mental-health professionals.

The conference was not a formal meeting of professionals but an event made by and for youth activists who were keen on putting their energies in the field of mental health. The non-formal learning approach allowed working in small groups, which was great to get in touch, to learn how to work cooperatively together, to share experiences faced in very different settings.
The lack of in-depth information on mental health policies at national and international level could have been overcome by inviting some experts and merging the non-formal approach with a few formal lectures. Nevertheless, Evelyne Paradis took part in the conference on the behalf of ILGA-Europe, sharing with participants the ILGA-Europe’s engagement in the fields of social inclusion and non-discrimination.. Furthermore John Bowis, member of the European Parliament and member of the European Parliament’s Intergroup on LGBT rights, was in Riga and discussed with participants about common mental health problems encountered by LGBT communities in different countries. On the occasion of the IGLYO press-conference, Mr. Bowis stressed the link between mental ill health and discrimination faced by LGBT people declaring “Stigmas like the ones an LGBT person faces are prejudice; prejudice may be the origin of numerous mental health problems in the LGBT community”.