LGBTQIA+ pride: psychologists tell the importance of mental health and well-being

Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, queer, intersex and asexuals and more, or LGBTQIA+, an acronym that brings together many specificities and, above all, recognition and pride in being who you are. On this June 28th, LGBTQIA+ Pride Day, psychologists comment on what it means to be proud and how this is part not only of building and who you are, but of a healthier and more tolerant society.

According to psychology professor at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ), researcher and activist Jaqueline Gomes de Jesus, pride is related to individual and collective mental health.

“This pride is fundamentally necessary for the guarantee of mental health, for the most individual well-being and also a collective well-being for a condition of recognizing oneself as a possible subject in that place, a possible subject in its richness of desires and ways of being. feel of being in the world to live freely”,

he said.

In the virtual publication Guidance on gender identity: concepts and terms, Jaqueline defines pride as: “Antonym of shame. Concept developed by the LGBT social movement to propagate the idea that each person’s way of being is a gift that brings them closer to communities with characteristics similar to their own, and should be affirmed as a difference that does not change, should not be repressed or recriminated ”.

“I explain pride as the opposite of shame and, being the opposite of shame, it means recognizing oneself as one is and valuing this way of being in all its complexity, in its different dimensions, although many people in our culture say that this way of being of identity and desire is not valued”, adds Jaqueline.

“If people cannot freely express their gender identity, because they are trans people, for example, or cannot experience their sexual orientation as homosexuals or bisexuals, how can we overcome the mental health of the LGBTQIA+ population?”.

Research carried out by Datafolha in 2022 shows that eight out of ten young Brazilians, aged 15 to 29, had mental health problems. Problems include negative thoughts, difficulty concentrating, anxiety attacks, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, and hurting your own body. Among young people who identify as LGBTQIA+ these issues are even more common, reported by nine out of ten, or 92% of this group.

Psychologist, entrepreneur and influencer Lucas de Vito argues that many of these problems are related to being prevented from being who you are. “It’s talking about who we are and living life according to our wishes, respecting everyone and everyone. That’s why it impacts our mental health a lot because when we can’t live this pride it means that we are annulling our existence and living a life that is not ours“, it says.

Another definition of pride can be found in the Michaelis dictionary: Feeling of pleasure or satisfaction that a person feels in relation to something that he himself or someone related to him does well”. But what does it mean to do something well? For the interviewees, in our society there is an understanding of a standard considered satisfactory. A pattern that often excludes diversity.

“The pride of being LGBTQIA+ is being able to go against the tide of backwardness that exists in our country. Against a system that wants to see us without rights, that doesn’t want to see us exposed, that says that we can exist between four walls, that we can exist without existing, in this case”,

says Devito.

a collective matter

Understanding that you are not alone can be an important step in affirming your own identity. Last year, for the first time, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) collected data on homosexual and bisexual people in Brazil. The institute registered 3 million people and admitted that the number could be higher.

For the professor at the Federal University of Rio e Janeiro (UFRJ) and president of the Federal Council of Psychology, Pedro Paulo Bicalho, it is necessary to review current social standards, which often exclude diversity, in favor of a society that is for everyone.

“There is a construction of a standard of which it is proud and it is necessary to deconstruct these standards, including within the LGBTIQI+ community, it is necessary for the community to look at these standards as something historically constructed and what is historically constructed can also be historically deconstructed”, says he adds: “It is very important to understand that patterns are only built through power relations and these power relations can be reconfigured and we can build other patterns, those patterns that are produced from the outside in can be rethought and replaced from elsewhere”.

When society is not capable of welcoming, self-knowledge and empowerment by an LGBTQIA+ community becomes an alternative. “Brazil is a champion in the murder of LGBTQIA+ people, especially the population of transvestites and transsexuals, therefore, reaching pride despite so much violence is not an easy path, it is a path in which it is necessary to subjectively decriminalize what is historically said ”, explains Bicalho.

“Pride is also pride in understanding oneself no longer as sick, no longer as deviant, therefore, the path that leads people to pride is the path of empowerment, it is the path of, despite the violence, being proud of being who one is. It is”.

The collective also has strength, points out the professor. Pride Day itself is born in a collective action. On June 28, 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn bar, LGBTQIA+ bar, in Greenwich Village, New York, in the United States reacted for the first time to the constant police truculence. The event became a milestone in the defense of civil rights for this population.

“It is the first time that people have revolted and put an end to police violence. So, the historical origin is the pride for having rebelled, it is the pride for not having maintained the customary repressions and, thus, the community looks at this date with pride for having one day managed to react and start a new historical process where the struggle also becomes the fight for the guarantee of civil rights”,

says Bicalho.

The safety and mental health of the LGBTQIA+ population, according to the experts interviewed, also involves recognizing the overlapping of social identities that often leads to more discrimination.

According to the clinical psychologist of the Coordination of Rapid Testing and Mental Health of Grupo Arco-Iris, Marcelle Esteves, all these identities form individuals.

“All these intersections are factors that will affect this individual to look at himself, to perceive himself with pride, with dignity, with the power to act in society, above all. If I have a woman, lesbian, black, fat and from the slums, look how many barriers she has to face daily to prove, for example, her qualities. So, this path is more tortuous, because she is rejected as a woman, rejected because she is fat, rejected because she is a lesbian ”,

it says.

“There is an issue, when we talk about intersectionality and when we are people who experience different discriminations. For us, the violence we suffer and the obstacles are much greater. There is a level, not just a sum, but a level of multiplication of these factors that we do not have much control over to what extent they affect or harm us, but we are aware of this damage and that it is much greater”, adds Jaqueline.

According to both, the construction of pride involves individual knowledge, but also the family nucleus, friends and support networks. In terms of public policies, it goes through sectors such as health and education. All these actors are important to ensure that individuals can live fully in our society.

The press and social networks also play an important role. “The media plays a key role. We need to talk about the media as a whole. We have several possibilities and several media, not only the predominant ones, but there are social networks, we have newspapers, neighborhood radios, which can, more and more, bring debates, talk about this process of constitution of being, of accepting- if, from realizing who you are, from looking at yourself and finding yourself beautiful, beautiful, beautiful”, emphasizes Marcelle.

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