Pansexual Visibility Day: Here’s How to Support Pan Youth
pansexual youth to highlight the need to support this young population.The group defines pansexuality as “an attraction to people of any gender or to people regardless of their gender.”A majority of youth who identify as pansexual say they’ve been discriminated against due to their sexual orientation (69 percent), the Trevor Project reported.
In the organization’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, researchers found that 53 percent of pansexual youth reported that they seriously considered suicide and 21 percent reported they attempted suicide in the past year.Additionally, 66 percent reported symptoms of anxiety and 79 percent reported having symptoms of depression.“These rates were significantly higher than those reported by lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, and asexual youth,” Jonah DeChants, research scientist at the Trevor Project, said in an email to The Advocate.The organization even has a guide called “How to Support Bisexual Youth: Ways to Care for Bisexual, Pansexual, Fluid, and Queer Youth Who are Attracted to More than One Gender.”The guide offers best practices for people to better understand and also support youth who are attracted to more than a single gender, DeChants said.“We consistently see in our research that LGBTQ youth, across all identities, who feel supported and affirmed by the people in their lives report better mental health outcomes and lower rates of suicide risk,” he said.
