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National Coming Out Day: Visibility Matters and So Does the Right to Choose
AWARENESS STATEMENT
For Immediate Release
11 October 2026
For generations of LGBTQIA+ people, coming out has been described as a moment of extraordinary significance. Sometimes it is exactly that: the first time somebody says aloud words they may have rehearsed privately for years, an act that can carry relief, pride, honesty, resistance, vulnerability and joy all at once. It can transform a relationship because somebody is finally able to say, this is who I am, and discover that the person listening remains beside them.
For many others, however, there is no single dramatic moment. Coming out may happen again and again across a lifetime: in a new workplace, with a new doctor, while meeting a partner’s family, joining a sporting club, entering therapy, moving into aged care, travelling somewhere unfamiliar or deciding whether a casual conversation feels safe enough to correct somebody’s assumption. Sometimes the decision is also not to disclose at all.
On National Coming Out Day, the Australian Association of Mental Health Practitioners believes there is value in celebrating visibility while also acknowledging something that can become lost within the celebration: nobody owes the world their coming-out story.
From visibility to choice
National Coming Out Day began in the United States in 1988, one year after the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Its founders understood something politically and socially powerful: prejudice is harder to sustain when the people being discussed abstractly are our children, siblings, friends, colleagues, neighbours and people we love. Visibility helped change societies because people who came out publicly, often at considerable personal risk, helped humanise debates that had previously treated LGBTQIA+ people as an issue rather than as people.
That history deserves respect, but almost four decades later our understanding can also become more nuanced. Coming out should not become another standard against which LGBTQIA+ people are judged, nor should disclosure be treated as proof of confidence, pride or psychological health.
AAMHP Chair Shane Warren, a mental-health practitioner and long-standing LGBTQIA+ community leader, said authenticity and disclosure are not the same thing.
“We often talk about coming out as though it is the final step towards becoming authentically yourself. For many people it can be wonderfully liberating, but somebody can know exactly who they are and still make a thoughtful decision about who gets access to that part of their story. Being private is not the same as being ashamed. Choosing safety is not cowardice, and nobody should have to disclose their sexuality, gender or identity simply to demonstrate that they are sufficiently proud.” [Shane Warren]
That distinction matters because coming out can carry very different consequences depending upon the person and their circumstances. For some, disclosure brings acceptance, greater intimacy and relief. For others, it may involve risks relating to housing, employment, family relationships, cultural or religious communities, financial support, personal safety or immigration circumstances. Those risks are not distributed equally.
A teenager living with supportive parents is navigating a very different decision from a young person who fears being removed from home. A financially independent adult may have options unavailable to somebody dependent upon family. A person living in inner-city Sydney may experience community visibility differently from someone in an isolated regional community. Culture, faith, age, disability, race, migration experience and socioeconomic circumstances can all shape what disclosure means and what consequences may follow.
Respecting LGBTQIA+ people therefore also means respecting agency.
Coming out rarely happens only once
The familiar phrase “coming out of the closet” can make the experience sound deceptively finite, as though one door opens, a person steps through it and life continues. For many LGBTQIA+ people, the reality is far more repetitive and situational.
A person may be completely open with friends but not at work. They may live openly in Australia but become cautious when visiting family overseas. They may speak freely about their partner while choosing not to discuss their gender history. Someone who has been openly gay for forty years may enter hospital or residential aged care and suddenly find themselves deciding all over again whether disclosure feels safe. A bisexual person may repeatedly find their identity assumed away according to the gender of their current partner, while a transgender person may encounter questions about disclosure in circumstances where cisgender people are rarely expected to explain themselves at all.
Shane Warren said this repetition has psychological implications.
“People sometimes ask, ‘When did you come out?’ as though there should be one date in the diary. The truth is that many LGBTQIA+ people come out hundreds of times across a lifetime, or make hundreds of tiny decisions not to. Most heterosexual people do not have to conduct a quick safety assessment before casually mentioning their partner. That little calculation... Do I correct this assumption? Is this person safe? Will this change how they treat me?... can become so routine that we forget it is emotional labour.” [Shane Warren]
The mental-health question is not identity, it is what happens around identity
It is important to be clear about where the mental-health issue sits. Being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual or otherwise sexuality or gender diverse is not itself a mental-health problem. The difficulties arise from the environments in which people are expected to live and from experiences such as stigma, discrimination, rejection, exclusion, violence or the pressure to conceal significant parts of themselves.
The Australian Government’s National Action Plan for the Health and Wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ People 2025–2035 recognises that, despite substantial improvements in legal rights and social acceptance, LGBTIQA+ Australians continue to experience discrimination, stigma and trauma, including within healthcare environments, and that these experiences contribute to inequitable health and mental-health outcomes.
Australian research tells a similar story. La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society has documented relationships between discrimination, harassment, social exclusion, community belonging and mental-health outcomes across LGBTQIA+ populations. The lesson for practitioners is that identity itself should not be treated as the pathology; the more useful question is often what has happened around that identity.
A practitioner might therefore ask whether somebody has experienced rejection, whether they are concealing an important relationship, whether they feel safe at home, whether they are isolated from community or whether previous encounters with health professionals have left them feeling judged or misunderstood. Equally, we should leave room for the possibility that a client’s presenting concern has very little to do with sexuality or gender at all.
Inclusive practice does not mean turning every presenting problem into an identity issue. Sometimes a gay man is anxious because he has an unreasonable boss. Sometimes a lesbian couple is arguing about money. Sometimes a bisexual person is grieving a parent. Sometimes a transgender client wants to discuss their career. Good practice allows identity to matter without making it explain everything.
The task is not to get somebody out
AAMHP Secretary Susan Sandy said mental-health practitioners should be particularly cautious about imposing their own expectations around disclosure.
“The task of a practitioner is not to get somebody out. It is to help them think safely and honestly about what they want, what matters to them, what supports they have and what consequences they may realistically face. Sometimes the therapeutic work may support somebody preparing to have an important conversation, and sometimes it may involve helping them decide that now is not the right time. Both can be thoughtful and healthy decisions when they belong to the person making them.” [Susan Sandy]
This is particularly important when working with young people. Celebrating stories of acceptance can offer hope, but practitioners should never assume that every young person lives within an environment where disclosure is immediately safe. Rather than asking simply, Why haven’t you told them?, it may be more useful to explore who feels safe, what the young person believes might happen, who could support them afterwards, whether they actually want others to know and what they would need if the response were not what they hoped for.
These are questions about agency, planning and psychological safety rather than about pushing someone towards a predetermined outcome.
Coming out to ourselves
There is another part of the story that receives less attention: before disclosure to others comes the process of understanding ourselves. For some people that recognition arrives early and with certainty. For others it develops gradually, perhaps involving experimentation with language, uncertainty about labels or the realisation that a term which once felt right no longer fully describes their experience.
Mental-health practitioners should be able to tolerate that uncertainty rather than rushing to organise somebody’s identity for them. A person may know something about themselves long before they have language for it; another may decide that no particular label is useful at all.
Shane Warren said sometimes the most important response is simply curiosity.
“Not every person who walks into a consulting room questioning sexuality or gender requires an answer from us. Often they need somewhere safe enough to hear their own answer developing. Our role is not to hand somebody an identity. It is to create enough room for them to explore what is true for them without shame, urgency or somebody else’s agenda.” [Shane Warren]
The responsibility also belongs to those receiving the story
Coming-out conversations are usually described from the perspective of the person disclosing, but there is always another participant: the person being told. That might be a friend, parent, colleague, sibling, teacher or practitioner, and the way that person responds can become part of the memory forever.
The perfect words are not required. Often the most useful response is something simple: Thank you for trusting me. I love you. What would you like me to understand? Who else knows? Is this something you want me to keep private? How can I support you?
If the disclosure comes as a surprise, the person receiving it is allowed to need time to understand, but their surprise should not become an immediate burden the LGBTQIA+ person is required to manage. Confidentiality also matters. Being trusted with somebody’s identity does not confer permission to disclose it to others, and wherever possible the person should retain control over who knows their story.
Beyond “coming out”: creating places worth coming into
Perhaps National Coming Out Day ultimately asks something of the rest of society. We spend considerable time encouraging LGBTQIA+ people to be visible, but we should spend at least as much time asking whether the environments into which they are being invited are worthy of their trust.
Is the workplace genuinely inclusive after the Pride Month logo disappears? Can a young person mention a same-gender crush at school without becoming the subject of ridicule? Can an older lesbian enter aged care confident that her relationship history will be respected? Can a bisexual client tell a practitioner how they identify without having it questioned? Can transgender people access health services without being expected to educate every professional they encounter?
There are also more complex questions involving faith, culture and family. Can people of faith hold both their LGBTQIA+ identity and spiritual life without being told they must abandon one to retain the other? Can culturally diverse LGBTQIA+ people belong to multiple communities without outsiders insisting those identities are incompatible?
These questions move the responsibility away from the individual alone. The Australian Government’s national LGBTIQA+ health plan calls for safer, respectful, high-quality and inclusive healthcare and recognises that meaningful improvement requires change across systems rather than simply greater resilience from people experiencing discrimination. That principle extends far beyond healthcare.
If we want people to live openly, we must keep building communities in which openness is reasonably safe.
On National Coming Out Day
AAMHP celebrates those for whom coming out has represented freedom, connection and joy. We acknowledge those who came out decades ago when doing so carried extraordinary professional, familial, legal or personal risk, and we recognise the activists whose visibility changed public understanding and helped create freedoms later generations sometimes inherit without seeing the cost at which they were won.
We also stand with those preparing to tell someone for the first time, those who are not ready, those who have chosen privacy, those who cannot safely disclose, those who have come out many times, those still searching for language that fits and those who simply do not believe their identity requires an announcement.
National Coming Out Day can celebrate courage, but courage has many forms. Sometimes courage is saying the words; sometimes it is waiting. Sometimes it is leaving an unsafe environment, asking for help, changing the language once used for yourself or discovering that the person you feared telling simply reaches across the table and says, I already love you.
Perhaps, as our communities continue to evolve, the measure of progress will not simply be how many LGBTQIA+ people are willing to come out. It will be how safe, ordinary and unremarkable we have made it for people to live honestly on their own terms.
Visibility matters. Pride matters. Authenticity matters. And so does the right to decide who receives your story, when they receive it and how it is told.
About National Coming Out Day
National Coming Out Day is observed annually on 11 October. It was first held in 1988 following the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and has since become an internationally recognised occasion for LGBTQIA+ visibility and reflection.
Media Contact:
Shane Warren, Chair
Susan Sandy, Secretary
Philip Armstrong, CEO
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