CASPER, Wyo. – Last year, a Casper PRIDE committee discovered disturbing trends when the group surveyed the local LGBTQ+ community for a community health project.
“We asked the queer community of Casper what’s your number one issue right now and we got a ton of responses, but the number one response was suicide prevention and awareness,” said Casper PRIDE’s Mallory Pollock. “That’s what got us into this project.”
Casper PRIDE was able to secure grant funding to address suicide and other areas affect Casper’s queer community, including tobacco use, alcohol abuse by adults and underage people, and opioid and prescription drug abuse.
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Wyoming consistently has one of the highest suicide rates per capita in the country, and a recent study found that 40 percent of LGBTQ youth have “seriously considered” suicide over the past year.
While suicide is a leading concern and was the impetus of the project, it will also focuses on the additional key health areas that can all contribute to suicide.
With a grant received through the Casper-Natrona County Health Department, they’ve teamed up with research experts at Graybull-based Waller Hall Research’s The Henne Group and have started assembling a focus group to move forward. Ultimately they hope to provide effective and readily available resources that make LGBTQ people feel safe and welcome.
“The focus groups are trying to reach people who have experience with any of those five areas, to ask them about their issues and to help us design a social media campaign,” she said. “We’re trying to collect local resources to give out to the local queer community, whether it lives on a website or in pamphlets that say ‘here’s where you can go for this,’ or ‘here’s a safe provider.’”
People who participate in the focus group will receive a $20 gift card for their time.
Pollock says the group has also sent out packets to potential providers addressing the five basic concerns as they gather resources for the project.
“Hopefully when we come out of this we’ve created a resource guide to distribute,” she said.
Pollock says while queer communities are more vocal than before, they still tend to face significant pushback from certain populations of rural communities.
“Kids are more bold and more out there, but on the backend it’s still the same,” said Pollock.
“It’s still coming with a lot of the same consequences,” she said, “like kids couch-surfing, getting cut off from families and living with friends, and all of the issues that come with that.”
“Until we are all a more inclusive community, people will continue to abuse and misuse substances in order to cope, numb, and try to deal with living somewhere that doesn’t accept them,” said Pollock. “We’re trying to combat that, and meet that head on and try to help people through that.”
People interested in participating in the focus study can go to a the Henne Group and Casper PRIDE’s site. Information and updates will also be posted at Casper PRIDE’s Facebook page.
