Lockdown: Suicide fears soar in LGBT community

There has been a significant rise during lockdown in the UK in the number of LGBT people seeking suicide-prevention support.

Support group LGBT Hero reports 11,000 people have accessed its suicide-prevention web pages - up over 44% on the first three months of the year.

The government considers LGBT people to be at higher risk of suicide but no national data on LGBT suicides is kept.

In total, eight charities told BBC News they had seen an increase in LGBT people accessing their support for suicide prevention.

The LGBT Foundation has received more calls about suicide "than ever before". 

Gavin Boyd, of The Rainbow Project, based in Northern Ireland, said: "In just the last three weeks, we know of three LGBT people who have ended their lives."

And another chief executive of a charity, in the south of England, who did not want to be named in case it affected its funding, said: "We know of two young LGBT people in the past two weeks. We're under more pressure to deliver than ever before. The government has done absolutely nothing to help regional LGBT charities cope with the demand from our already struggling service users."

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Source: BBC News, 2 July 2020