This is part of a series of interviews with young Utahns making a meaningful impact on their communities’ — and their own — mental health. Read more.
Editor’s note • This article discusses suicide. If you or people you know are at risk of self-harm, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for 24-hour support.
Young LGBTQ+ adults are more than twice as likely to report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness than their heterosexual peers, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention. Transgender youth face are twice as likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to their LGBTQ+ peers.
Encircle, a Utah-based nonprofit organization which offers mental health services and programs for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults, reports providing more than 200,000 mental health services for Utahns since 2017.
For Shem Busenbark, the work is personal.
As a high schooler, he sought connection through the program. Now, at 24 years old, he says he’s “really lucky” to be able to help other young Utahns find community and self-expression as Encircle Provo’s assistant home director.
Busenbark recently spoke with The Tribune about how working with others to improve mental health outcomes can be both challenging and rewarding. This Q&A with him has been edited for length and clarity.
Sara Weber: What kind of services does Encircle provide, particularly as it relates to mental health?
Shem Busenbark: When guests think of Encircle, they think of a community, they think of a place where they can come and make new friends, where they can come to feel safe and start building connections.
I think our friendship circles are one of the strongest weapons that we have to fight some of the mental illnesses that our guests — well, everybody in Utah — are facing. But I think that all of our programs are really aimed at just connecting our guests and allowing them a safe space to connect with each other and to uplift each other.
How does that connection help guests with their mental health?
We see, statistically, that when queer youth have even one accepting person in their life, you know, the statistics for suicide and for depression and for anxiety, they lessen quite drastically.
It’s as simple as providing a place for them to make friendships and for them to continue to use the names that they like and to get to use the pronouns that they feel most comfortable using.
What challenges do you face in your day-to-day work?
Sometimes we’re looking at not safe home lives, sometimes we’re looking at [guests who are] just not safe in their own body, not feeling safe in their own brain. And it’s really just about connecting these guests with resources that are available to them. And, unfortunately, there isn’t a plethora of queer family resources in Utah. So we are really eager to find these little nuggets that will help our community and be able to provide that for them.
Can you tell me about the impacts you’ve seen of the work you do?
What’s toughest is when you see the house working, when you see these guests successfully building connections and you see them feeling supported. Ultimately, it doesn’t mean that they’re drifting from the house, it means that they are able to take these connections into the real world, that they’re able to take the safe space and start building others for themselves. And that can be heartbreaking. But for me, that also means that it kind of worked.
On top of that, nothing makes me happier than when we see our youth and our young adult guests get excited about getting involved with Encircle or with any organization that they’re excited about. I think that our guests have such a capacity to love and to uplift each other. What’s most rewarding for me is when we see guests connect and uplift each other, and hopefully be able to take that into their life and take that into their future.
What advice do you have for other young adults who are looking to help improve their peers’ mental health?
We have got to be the change that we want to see in the world. There are so many awesome people out here in the world. It’s just about finding the people who are going to help you move in the right direction and who are going to help you achieve the things that you want. I think that a lot of young people these days are really, really, really courageous and really, really strong.
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