During the past two decades there have been not only dramatic shifts in public attitudes toward LGBT people and issues ( Gallup 2015), but also an emergence of research from multiple and diverse fields that has created what is now a solid foundation of knowledge regarding mental health in LGBT youth. Yet the first public and research attention to young LGBTs focused explicitly on mental health: A small number of studies in the 1980s began to identify concerning rates of reported suicidal behavior among “gay” youth, and a US federal report on “gay youth suicide” ( Gibson 1989) became controversial in both politics and research ( Russell 2003). This awareness can be traced to larger sociocultural shifts in understandings of sexual and gender identities, including the emergence of the “gay rights” movement in the 1970s and the advent of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. In the period of only two decades, there has been dramatic emergence of public and scientific awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) lives and issues.
