LGBTQIA+ people in Scotland experience multiple health inequalities compared to heterosexual and cis (non-trans) folk. One of the most important health issues we face is poor mental health - gay and bisexual men can be up to 3 times as likely to experience anxiety and depression than heterosexual men, and things are even worse for lesbians, bisexual women, trans, non-binary, and other sexual and gender minority folk.
At the moment, there's no clear way for folk in Scotland to come together to work towards improving the mental health of folk in our community. We know there are some great pieces of research underway, and some charities doing some incredible work. Similarly community groups and businesses are helping improve our health but we don't have any way of linking this all together and finding out who is doing what, where and when. This is where the LGBTQIA+ Mental Health Network for Scotland comes in!
We want to create a network where folk interested in improving LGBTQIA+ Mental Health in Scotland can come together, to share the work we are already doing and work out what we need to do next. This means we are interested in connecting all types of people across Scotland who are interested in LGBTQIA+ mental health - including individual community members, community groups, 3rd sector and charities, universities and researchers, statutory service providers including GPs, Nurses and other NHS folk, policy makers, governments and commercial organisations working with or for our LGBTQIA+ communities.
Just now we are in a developmental phase for the network, so we are setting up some of the basic infrastructure (including this website), advertising the network across Scotland and running up some developmental events so we can work our WHO to include in our network and HOW you want it to run.
If this sounds like you , please come along to one of our developmental events - click on the Events tab above - so we can develop an inclusive LGBTQIA+ Mental Health Network to drive forwards this agenda and improve the mental health of our LGBTQIA+ communities.
Love, Peace and Mental Health, Jamie and Hazel x
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