OXFORD, Ohio — Three years after a car accident that would change his life forever, a neurologist asked Adam Langen a question that took him by surprise.

“What is your support system?” Langen remembers the doctor asking.

He didn’t have an answer.

“I just told him I was a gay man,” Langen said. “And I only cried in front of him.”

Isolation.

It’s a concern we’ve heard this week with us Look for the Solutions community conversation about mental health. And it’s something that the data shows is worse in the LGTBQ+ community.

“My trip out was really traumatic,” Langen said. “I didn’t have a lot of people to support me.”

At times, Langen said he felt like all he had was his dog, Louie.

Keith BieryGolick

In the community park in Oxford, where he walked to deal with his pain, Langen scrolls through pictures of the car accident on his phone. It happened in 2019 on the way home from Indiana after being picked up by a guy.

“My bumper was wrapped around a tree,” he said. “I had escaped death and was just looking at the damage.”

The accident affected much more than his physical health – even if he didn’t realize it at the time.

“I kept looking 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, clinical director for the Child focus. “Brain health is no different than physical health.”

Loneliness affects two out of three students, according to data from the network for healthy minds. At WCPO 9’s Community Conversation on Mental Health, experts told us that isolation can be especially dangerous for marginalized communities.

“In the LGBTQ community, having a trusted adult in your life lowers the odds of suicide by 40 percent,” said Kate Schroder, president and CEO of Interact for health.

For years, when Langen thought about the car accident, he felt physical pain. Pain that almost made him pass out. He dropped out of school, trying to make his body feel better without facing his mental pain.

“It’s hard,” he said. “I was a gay kid who grew up in the Catholic church.”

He felt isolated. Sometimes depressed. Sometimes drug and alcohol use. His relationship with his family is still broken.

“It was a battle,” he said.

A battle the 27-year-old is now fighting by leading peer support groups in Butler County with National Alliance on Mental Illness — sharing a story that once embarrassed him. A story that is now two semesters away from graduating from the University of Miami.

“I hope at the end of the day, people see me. I have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else,” he said. “I am a human being.”

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RESOURCES:

If you or someone you love needs help, you can talk to someone today by calling the Suicide and Crisis Helpline at 988.

Call: Call 988 for immediate assistance
Text: Text 988 for a real-time chat with an advisor
Chat: Visit 988lifeline.org to chat online

For more information on peer support groups for people living with mental illness, you can find this Here.