The Virginia Rural Health Association is troubled by the new guidelines announced by Governor Youngkin that address parental rights for transgender students. VRHA remains committed to the health and wellbeing of all rural Virginians, inclusive of mental health. VRHA launched our Pride of Rural Virginia initiative last year and is aware that support and resources for LGBTQIA+ youth is harder to access in our rural communities.
The new guidelines state parents must be informed and given the opportunity to object before the school provides counseling services related to gender. The implementation of this restriction will mean that parents who are unsupportive of their transgender child can refuse counseling services for the student. Additionally, notifying the parents may increase the potential of a student being verbally or emotionally abused by a non-supportive parent.
The University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center recently released the policy brief “Key Informant Perspectives on Supporting Health and Well-Being for LGBTQ+ Rural Residents.” That document outlines a number of barriers to health equity for our LGBTQIA+ citizens with lack of services and an unsupportive environment listed first. “Discrimination is not uniquely rural, but when it happens in rural the impact is much more profound” stated one respondent.
The majority of Virginia’s rural communities are classified as Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas by the US Human Resources and Services Administration. Virginia must increase protective factors that prevent mental health crisis for all community members.
Research suggests that among LGBTQ youth, only one-third experience parental acceptance, with an additional one-third experiencing parental rejection, and the final one-third not disclosing their LGBTQ identity until they are adults (Katz-Wise et al., 2015). Young adults who report high levels of parental rejection are eight times more likely to report attempting suicide and six times more likely to report high levels of depression (Ryan et al., 2009).
Many LGBTQ youth lack access to affirming spaces, with only 55% of LGBTQ youth reporting that their school is LGBTQ-affirming and only 37% saying that their home is LGBTQ-affirming. Fewer than 1 in 3 transgender and nonbinary youth found their home to be gender-affirming and a little more than half (51%) found their school to be affirming. The Trevor Project’s research consistently finds that LGBTQ young people report lower rates of attempting suicide when they have access to LGBTQ-affirming spaces.
In April of 2022, the Virginia Department of Health released the report, Self-Harm and Suicide Among Virginia Youth Aged 9-18 Years, 2015-2021. While the report does not separate by sexual orientation or gender identity, it has a number of troubling statistics, including:
- Self-harm ED visits and nonfatal self-harm hospitalizations are increasing.
- Young Virginians were hospitalized for self-harm-related injuries for 1,588 days with more than $13 million dollars in hospitalization costs in 2020.
The Commonwealth of Virginia should work to reduce factors that lead to self-harm and suicide, particularly in rural areas where resources are limited. Ideally, a student would have both supportive parents and a supportive school environment. The new guidelines create an environment in which a student may not have either.
Additional Links:
- ABC 13 News article:
Virginia Rural Health Assoc. calls Youngkin’s transgender guidelines ‘troubling’
- CBS 6 News article:
Thousands of comments pour in opposing Virginia’s transgender policy for students
For more information, contact Beth O’Connor – boconnor@vrha.org (540) 231-7923