Mental health issues and victimisation among LGBTQI-youth: a comparative study in Swedish and Danish schools

LGBTQI-youth are a marginalized group in school. A vast majority of LGBTQI-youth report exposure to homophobia and transphobia in school.

Violence and threats related to sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression often result in mental health issues.

Today, there is a lack of research investigating LGBTQI-youth’s experiences of mental health issues related to victimization in school.

As a marginalized group, both with regard to vulnerability and minority position in school, LGBTQI-students’ schooling experiences are often forgotten and even ignored in research.

It is with this backdrop the proposed study aims  to investigate these issues by conducting individual, semi-structured interviews with LGBTQI-students aged 15-19-years in Sweden and Denmark (approximately 120 interviews in total).

This comparative study will generate new knowledge about marginalized students’ schooling experiences, student victimisation, mental health issues, discrimination processes, and how professionals may find ways to prevent these issues in Swedish and Danish schools.

The results will also be important for policy makers in Sweden and Denmark, as well as professionals outside of school who meet LGBTQI-youth in their everyday work. The proposed project will run for four years and will be lead by the University of Gothenburg.

The research team will include researchers from both Sweden and Denmark, whom are among the most renowned youth researchers in the Nordic countries.