The Trevor Project’s 2022 national survey of approximately 34,000 LGBTQ young people found that those who delayed coming out by two or more years after first recognizing their identity reported a past-year suicide attempt rate of 16%, compared with 12% among those who came out within one year — the dominant inaction-side signal in this entry. A 2021 meta-analysis across 193 studies (n = 92,236) confirmed a small but consistent link between sexual orientation concealment and internalizing mental health problems (effect size r = 0.126).
On the action side, Pew Research Center’s 2013 survey of 1,197 self-identified LGBT adults found that 7% said their sexual orientation or gender identity was “mainly something negative” in their life. Since 86% of this sample had disclosed to at least one close friend and 54% said all or most important people in their life knew, the 7% figure approximates dissatisfaction among a predominantly out population. On outcomes: among those who told their mother, 14% reported the relationship grew weaker, 46% said it stayed the same, and 39% said it grew stronger.
The broad pattern aligns with Gilovich and Medvec’s prediction that inaction regret tends to dominate over time. For those who came out, only 7% view their orientation as a net negative, and 14% of disclosures to a mother produced relational damage. Staying closeted, by contrast, imposes a measurable psychological tax: the Pachankis and Bränström meta-analysis documents elevated depression and anxiety tied to concealment across decades of research, and the Trevor Project data show a 4-percentage- point gap in past-year suicide attempts between delayed and early disclosers. By 2024, Gallup found that 82% of LGBTQ adults had come out to at least one person, and the median coming-out age has been falling across generations (17 for those under 30 vs. 26 for those over 65), consistent with a population that increasingly treats disclosure as the preferred path.
Neither number is a true regret rate. The 7% captures those who view their openly lived orientation as net negative, not a direct question about whether coming out was a mistake. The 16% is a suicide attempt prevalence among youth who delayed disclosure — a severe mental health outcome, not a measure of whether closeted individuals wish they had come out. The two figures are drawn from different populations (US adults in an online panel; help-seeking youth ages 13-24 recruited via social media) and measure different constructs (life satisfaction vs. mental health crisis), so the delta is directional rather than precise. Survivorship bias is significant on the action side: people whose outcomes were so negative they declined to participate in an LGBT survey are missing from the Pew data. Cultural context varies enormously, and the cost- benefit calculus of disclosure shifts with geography, family religiosity, and the decade in question.