Absolutely.
It's important to recognize the impacts of persecution and the impacts of being told that your identity makes you mentally ill or evil or a sinner. Those are profoundly silencing and shaming.
It's also important to recognize that people tend to experience homophobic and transphobic persecution in their most intimate relationships--in their families and their schools--and then also with officials. So the shame and the fear are deeply entrenched.
I have seen people take months to be able to work up the nerve to say “I am gay” or “I am lesbian” out loud, let alone out loud to an official in a government building.