A University of Delaware study found LGBTQ+ youth in the state experience higher rates of mental health issues and substance misuse.
About a quarter of Delaware youth identify as LGBTQ+, according to the Delaware School Survey. That makes some strategies to help queer children dated, as they might assume that the queer population is a small minority of adolescents.
UD Human Development and Family Sciences assistant professor Eric Layland led the study and said he walked away with one major worry.
“It is concerning that LGBTQ youth might be initiating substance use earlier than their peers because that can be a bit of a predictor of more problems in the future,” Layland said.
The report finds LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to engage in substance misuse, including prescription pills, by eighth grade than their cisgender, heterosexual classmates.
LGBTQ+ eighth graders were 91% more likely to report drinking alcohol, 141% more likely to report cigarette smoking and 86% more likely to report prescription drug misuse, according to the 2025 study.
It’s one of the first studies to use state data collected after the COVID-19 pandemic with data from 2022 to 2024, according to the University of Delaware.
Cisgender, heterosexual youth also reported alarmingly high rates of mental health issues, but the rates of psychological distress were even higher when looking only at LGBTQ+ students.
LGBT+ Delawarean eighth graders were 269% more likely to report psychological distress and 276% more likely to report anxiety.
LGBT+ eleventh graders followed a similar trend. They are 228% more likely to report psychological distress and 240% more likely to report anxiety than cisgender, heterosexual students.
“Based on the research that exists across the nation in terms of substance use and mental health, we did anticipate disparities,” Layland explained. “Some of what was surprising is how bad those disparities are, how alarming that gap is between these groups, particularly because Delaware is generally a state that has a lot of the right policies in place for protecting LGBTQ people.”
Layland said he and his colleagues may have hoped the disparities would be small or nonexistent, but the data paints a clear picture for queer youth: they are faring worse than their peers, he said.
While the right policies exist, they’re difficult to enforce.
“What's really difficult to assess is district by district, school by school, classroom by classroom adherence to these policies because a lot of what happens in terms of the mistreatment of LGBTQ youth is subtle,” Layland said. “It's not so much that a school has banned a queer youth from participating in an activity because of their identity, but it might be subtle mistreatment from a staff member or from peers that's maybe up to the teen themselves to have to be the one to document and report that this has happened.”
In terms of policy, Layland said he’d like to see more queer history included in school curricula. But he leaned into more locally-based solutions.
“Even teachers in classrooms can make changes without waiting for policy to mandate it,” Layland said. “Some of the takeaway from this research is that we shouldn't be waiting until high school and college to be providing support for LGBTQ youth because we see disparities by eighth grade already.”
That can come in the form of Gender and Sexuality Alliance Clubs in middle schools, which often currently start cropping up at the high school level. An even simpler fix would be including queer history in American history lessons, Layland suggested.
Additional bystander intervention could also help educators and peers learn how to respond if they observe mistreatment.
But these efforts to affirm and include queer children shouldn’t stop at school, Layland said.
“Even if a school might be a negative environment for an LGBTQ youth, supportive parents can buffer some of that harm by providing at least a home environment that's supportive,” Layland said.
Many parents of queer children end up online or directly asking their kids what they can do to help. But it’s difficult to pinpoint where to go from there, Layland said.
“We're really working to identify how to support parents, to support youth,” Layland said. “We're trying to get some projects off the ground in terms of statewide affirming resources to teach parents how to be more affirming, to process their feelings as parents of LGBTQ youth, connect with other parents, and ultimately be more supportive, more affirming and accepting of their teens.”
Bolstering queer adolescents’ support systems has no downside and leads to better outcomes throughout life.
