Rising hostility worsens mental health of queer young people

Rising hostility and targeted attacks are worsening the mental health of queer children and young people, Vienna’s psychosocial services and the Homosexual Initiative (HOSI) warn, ORF reports.

Vienna’s coordinator for psychiatry, addiction and drug issues, Ewald Lochner, blamed what he called a “societal backlash”. A city study found that the share of LGBTIQ+ people who regularly experienced discrimination in public rose from 28 per cent in 2015 to 38 per cent ten years later. Lochner said people were more likely to face hostility, for example, when a gay couple walked hand in hand through the city.

HOSI chair Ann-Sophie Otte also pointed to the political climate and what she described as a sharp shift to the right across Europe. One quarter of queer school pupils, university students and apprentices are not out, she said, while one in five reported explicitly negative experiences. Trans people are affected most often.

Vienna’s First Level Support service, a low-threshold contact point run by the city’s psychosocial services, has received more calls from queer people, particularly young people. Otte said fears and requests for counselling rose sharply this summer after a 29-year-old gay man from Vienna was allegedly murdered in Langenzersdorf for homophobic reasons.

Discrimination and violence affect not only their direct targets but also create fear among others, Lochner said. He cited a University of Bielefeld study that found people in the LGBTIQ+ community were two and a half times as likely to develop depression as people in the heterosexual community.

So-called “pedo hunters” have also been active in Austria for some time, the article said. Often radicalised online, they contact gay men, falsely accuse them of paedophilia and lure them to meetings where they attack them. Otte urged the federal government to investigate these networks and introduce stronger rules, saying the online space must not be “a lawless zone”.

Otte said psychosocial care works well in Vienna but is lacking in rural areas. The city’s services are not specifically for queer people, she said, but have a well-trained team to which HOSI can refer people. Promoting a city or region as queer-friendly would not require a large budget, she added, but depends on whether local authorities support the approach.