The “Q Corner & LGBTQ Awareness” event highlighted mental health problems in the LGBTQ+ community and local resources on May 20 as part of the Foothill-De Anza District Mental Health Awareness Week.

The two primary speakers Emmett Marsh and Isabella Garcia, workers at Q Corner, went over sexual and gender identity, pronouns, terminology and problems in the community.

“LGBTQ youth in particular have a unique developmental process that families and systems are often unprepared to support,” Marsh said.

They cited statistics for Santa Clara County, noting that 29% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+ and nearly half of transgender respondents to the county’s health assessment seriously considered suicide or self-harm in the past year.

“It can be kind of shocking to hear it,” Marsh said. “But there are a lot of things that can be done to support folks within our communities.”

Marsh and Garcia outlined resources in Santa Clara County, like The Gender Health Center, LGBTQ Youth Space and LGBTQ Wellness.

“We don’t want to see suicide attempts and they’re preventable,” Garcia said. “We can have that support; we can build on that support; we can be that support.”

The event also hosted brief breakout rooms, in which small groups of students introduced themselves and stated their pronouns.

“It seemed like a minuscule activity at first but I think it was a great one,” said Amanda Zachman, 18, psychology major. “Especially to introduce non-queer participants to the practice of normalizing stating your pronouns as a way of being supportive of trans people.”

Zachman said she was excited about the event and the information they went over, particularly the local resources that Q Corner outlined.

“Something that I really appreciated was that they provided lots of resources and information about local centers and support groups,” Zachman said. “They’re sometimes hard to find online on your own.”

If you want to learn more about Q Corner, you can find them on their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.