OXFORD, Ohio — Three years after a car crash that would forever change his life, a neurologist asked Adam Langen a question that took him by surprise.
“What’s your support system?” Langen remembers the doctor asking.
He didn’t have an answer.
“I just told him I’m a gay man,” Langen said. “And I just cried in front of him.”
Isolation.
It’s a concern we heard this week at our Search for Solutions community conversation about mental health. And it’s something data shows is worse in the LGTBQ+ community.
“My coming out journey was really traumatic,” Langen said. “I didn’t have a lot of people who supported me.”
At times, Langen said he felt like all he had was his dog, Louie.
At the community park in Oxford where he walked to deal with his pain, Langen swipes through pictures of the car crash on his phone. It happened in 2019, on his way home from Indiana after being stood up by a guy.
“My bumper was wrapped around a tree,” he said. “I had escaped death, and I was just looking out at the damage.”
The crash impacted much more than his physical health — even if he didn’t realize it at the time.
“I kept searching for physical answers,” he said. “The shame, the stigma, the isolation — the whole nine yards.”
He kept wondering what was wrong with him and why he couldn't fix it.
“There is a connection between the brain and the body,” said Laura Stith, chief clinical officer for Child Focus. “Brain health is no different than physical health."
Loneliness impacts two in three college students, according to data from the Healthy Minds Network. At WCPO 9’s community conversation about mental health, experts told us isolation can be particularly dangerous for marginalized communities.
“In the LGBTQ community, one trusted adult in your life decreases the chances of suicide by 40%,” said Kate Schroder, president and CEO of Interact for Health.
For years when Langen thought about the car crash, he felt physical pain. Pain that almost made him pass out. He dropped out of school, trying to make his body feel better without confronting his mental pain.
“It’s hard,” he said. “I was a gay child that grew up in the Catholic church.”
He felt isolated. Sometimes depressed. Sometimes using drugs and alcohol. His relationship with his family is still fractured.
“It’s been a battle,” he said.
A battle the 27-year-old now fights by leading peer support groups in Butler County with the National Alliance on Mental Illness — sharing a story that once embarrassed him. A story that now is two semesters away from graduating at Miami University.
“I hope that at the end of the day, people see me. I have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else,” he said. “I’m a human being.”
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RESOURCES:
If you or someone you love needs help, you can speak to someone today by dialing the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Call: Dial 988 for immediate support
Text: Send a message to 988 for real-time conversation with a counselor
Chat: Visit 988lifeline.org to chat online
For more information about peer support groups for people living with mental illness, you can find that here.
