Research on Mental Health Issues in Chinese LGBTQ+ Female Adolescents: Before and After Self-identifying and Coming Out

As the LGBTQ+ community has become more visible over time, societies have begun to pay more attention to these groups of people, whether their basic rights or mental health status. In China, despite the public has begun to raise awareness, there is still progress that we need to make in order to achieve complete visibility and equality. Our study aims to explore the relationship between mental health and LGBTQ+ identity/ coming out in order to provide a potential contribution to the achievement of equality. We designed a survey asking for basic information and details of respondents' mental health status before and after they self-identified and came out. We collected 56 valid responses from the Chinese female LGBTQ+ community and used Excel to analyze the statistics. Our study found that coming out would decrease the frequency of depression and anxiety and increase the level of self-esteem; self-identification has no significant effect on an individuals mental health. Also, coming out to parents and other elders improves an individuals mental health (decrease in depression and anxiety rate, increase in self-esteem) to a greater extent than coming out to close friends, lovers, normal friends, and other peers.