Sexuality and Mental Health with Josh Smith, Entertainment Director at Glamour and Celebrity Interviewer

“Talking and listening makes us feel that we can belong in a society that tells us all the time that we need to be more.”

Entertainment Director at Glamour and celebrity interviewer Josh Smith switches roles from interviewer to interviewee. From coming out as gay, being bullied for his sexuality, and facing some difficult times with his mental health, he speaks to the Be Well about the experiences which have shaped him to the person that he is today.

Coming out can be an incredibly isolating experience,  one that Josh described as liberating, however, still left him feeling as though there was no one who truly understood what he was going through. He admits that he had never even met another gay person growing up in the countryside and because of this, didn’t fully understand what it meant to be gay.

“Role models are the representation that people need. If you can’t see it you can’t be it.” 

Josh speaks about his experience with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder growing up, something which he thinks he developed as a coping mechanism to deal with the difficult feelings he was experiencing at the time. 

“It was me trying to control something, in a world that I didn’t feel like I had any control.”

Although Josh felt alone in these experiences, sadly poor mental health is far more common in the LGBTIQ+ community. There is no one reason for this however problems such as discrimination, homophobia or transphobia, social isolation, rejection, and difficult experiences of coming out, are all contributing factors. According to the Mental Health Foundation a recent study by Stonewall found that 

• half of LGBTIQ+ people had experienced depression and three in five had experienced anxiety 

• one in eight LGBTIQ+ people aged 18-24 had attempted to end their life 

• almost half of trans people had thought about taking their life.

If you are experiencing similar challenges to those that Josh speaks about in the video below, please know that it is not something which you have to go through alone. There are organisations such as Gender Trust and Mind Out who provide specific mental health support to the LGBTIQ+ community.