Mental health issues afflict individuals in LGBTQ community
Sunday, January 6, 2013 | 6:00 a.m. CST; updated 1:17 p.m. CST, Sunday, January 6, 2013
BY Kevin Dubouis

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/156949/mental-health-issues-afflict-individuals-in-lgbtq-community/

J'Lissabeth Faughn had a different experience. She's the former coordinator of MU's LGBTQ Resource Center and now runs Unity House — the University of California-Berkeley center that is connected to gender and LGBTQ studies.

During puberty, she was extremely uncomfortable with herself, but it was not the kind of discomfort that teenagers usually experience during this transitory phase. She found solace in food. In college, Faughn was still John — a man.

"If I was fat, I knew people wouldn't look at me," she remembers, gesturing to indicate a large stomach.

Emotional eating was also her way to deal with the physical abuse she experienced when she was a little boy. Her military father wouldn't accept that his son played with Barbie dolls, talked about fashion or cross-dressed. His father brutalized him.

"He wanted to beat the queer out of me," said Faughn, who describes her father dragging her out of bed by the hair.