The group who are among the hardest hit by pandemic's mental health crisis
direct to your inboxTowards the end of 2019, a 18-year-old from the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham visited Manchester’s gay village for the first time.From the moment Samuel Picton stepped foot on the Canal Street cobbles with his best friend, Bailey, he was enraptured by the glittering lights and atmosphere of the queer-friendly area.It was a space where he felt he could be himself without worry or fear.“I had never experienced a gay club or bar before,” Samuel, now 20, recalls.“There wasn’t any kind of LGBT+ scene where I was.“That night I realised that I had been living in the wrong city.”Conveniently, Samuel was already in the process of moving to Manchester.He knew there and then that he’d made the right decision.