The screens were awash with rainbows last month — vibrant, defiant, shimmering with the promise of freedom. Pride celebrations bloomed across India’s cities, corporations scrambled to drape themselves in rainbow flags, and for a fleeting moment, the world pretended it has made space for queer people to breathe. Not quite!
Pride is defiance, a celebration of our resilience, our grit and progress, but there are silences that stir behind the celebrations, grief behind the smiles. The most important is the physical and mental health of queer people in India. This is the paradox of Pride in a country that decriminalised homosexuality but never truly legalised queer existence.
In India, despite decriminalisation, India’s vast queer population, estimated by some as 135 million LGBTQIA++, remains at lifelong risk of mental health challenges, not to mention violence, abuse, marginalisation and erasure. Though large enough in number, they remain uncounted, and unheard.
Even today, most queer people are rejected, abused and face violence most commonly in the safest of all spaces — their own families and communities. As a result, India’s queer individuals face disproportionate mental health challenges due to social stigma, discrimination, and exclusion within families, communities and institutions. They live suspended between fragile hope and the daily erosion of self. Not criminals anymore, but not allowed to exist freely either.
While national data is limited, studies show queer folks experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal ideation than their cis-heterosexual peers. Are these mental health challenges natural companions of queerness? No. They are the carefully cultivated harvest of a society that still believes desire or love that does not conform to its standards is a crime or treats gender non-conformance of any kind fit for punishment. You are beaten into submission, silenced, excluded or erased.
Family coercion and economic and emotional dependence worsen these situations. Most families, armed with scripture and stigma, become the first battlegrounds. A parent’s rejection is not just a private grief — it is a sentence often for life. Conversion therapy, even though illegal, continues, sometimes within homes in diverse forms of harassment and coercion.
Conflict with the family about sexual orientation and gender identity is a key risk factor associated with poor mental health in queer folks. In the end, coming out, living independent, free queer lives, though not impossible, is difficult and dangerous, and queer people continue to exist on the margins of their families and society. This creates lifelong dissonance, breeds self-hate and a lack of compassion for self. The closet then is not a refuge but a choice of slow suffocation.
The betrayal is systemic. In villages and small towns, where the internet dangles the illusion of freedom but offers no escape, queer lives are negotiated in whispers. Conversion therapy, abuse and suicide are common. Escape to the city is the only liberation. It offers freedom but also loneliness and grief of losing your families.
What are the options?
Lavender marriages, forced estrangement, the relentless performance of “normalcy”, these are not choices. They are survival rafts.
Erasure by families and society, but also the health system, leads to a pathologisation of queer distress. Hence, psychiatrists and psychologists dismiss queer mental health challenges as something to live with, an occupational hazard of being. As a result, approaches to queer well-being are rarely about changing environments or asking society or parents to change attitudes. Instead, we focus on making queer people tolerate and manage exclusion and disrespect, rather than challenging the structures that enable it. Where are the interventions for parents who disown their children? They don’t exist.
For families, the learning gap is significant as well. Caught between conservative social and religious values, parents struggle with poor understanding of LGBTQIA++ identities, stigma, and misinformation. Socialised to be deeply homophobic, they are unable to change mindsets and accept their children.
India needs a national conversation on queer mental health, acceptance and family support. Data shows that parental acceptance improves mental health, achievement, and social functioning. I am often asked, can we change? Of course. Change is incremental, but collective action can change mindsets and attitudes.
A broader public narrative on queer Indians and South Asians that actively addresses this issue is needed urgently as are policy and programmes to contain this damage. We are harming queer folks for life if we do not address the social and environmental factors, particularly within families, that affect their mental health.
What can we do? We need parental educational programmes, ongoing conversations with communities, religious leaders and institutions that foster understanding and acceptance. We need a national policy on youth mental health that specifically addresses queer mental health. University programmes, teacher sensitisation, and school programmes that help parents and children understand sexuality and gender diversity are essential. Fears that this may push people towards homosexuality or gender diversity are unfounded. It will only help them live more compassionate lives, and help parents to be more responsive, as they should be, to these children fighting battles about their identity on a daily basis.
From the government, we need policy that moves away from conservative, one-sided pathologised research to queer-focussed research, where communities remain participants and help generate evidence to understand these issues better.
Finally, we need to remember queer people remain tax-paying citizens. Compassion is not a concession. Equity is not a bargaining chip. Dignity is not up for debate. You may turn away or pray us into silence, but we deserve equity and dignity — for all queer folks, of all ages. And it starts with our well-being.
The writer is a public health expert
