If a gay teenager is living in a conservative community where the majority of the residents feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with him because of his sexual orientation, is he likely to be at higher risk for suicide than gay or lesbian kids living in a more socially supportive environment?
In the past, studies have indicated that gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers try suicide at a significantly higher rate than heterosexual kids.
Yet there was no major empirical study that quantified the question of whether certain elements in a teenager’s social environment measurably increased or lowered the risk of suicide for LGB kids.
Until now.
After the rash of suicides among gay young men last year, Dr. Mark L. Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, with funding from the National Institute of Health (and others), decided it was time to find out what effects one’s social environment has on an LGB kid.
The results were published in Pediatrics Magazine on Monday.
Hatzenbuehler, who is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar and the new study’s lead investigator, examined the responses 32,000 Oregon 11th grade students who filled out questionnaires in the state’s yearly Oregon HealthyTeens survey between 2006 –2008. (Around one-third of Oregon’s 11th graders took part in the survey.)
Hatzenbuehler chose Oregon as his study site because it is one of the few states that asks kids about their sexual orientation on these yearly statewide surveys.
The study found that LGB youth were more than five times as likely to have attempted suicide in the previous 12 months, as their heterosexual peers (21.5 percent–or 1 in 5 LGB kids— vs. 4.2 percent, a little over 4 out of 100).
So would those figures change in a more supportive environment?
Hatzenbuehler developed five measures of the social environment surrounding LGB youth that included: 1) proportion of schools in the county with anti-bullying policies specifically protecting LGB students; 2) proportion of schools with Gay-Straight Alliances; 3) proportion of schools with anti-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation; 4) proportion of same-sex couples residing in the county and 5) proportion of Democrats in the county. (“Democrats” were used as a surrogate measure for a more socially liberal environment.)
In order to more accurately isolate the affect of the social environment, Hatzenbuehler controlled for other known risk factors like depression, binge drinking, peer victimization, and physical abuse by an adult.
The results of the study showed that LGB kids living in a “supportive” social environment attempted suicide 20 percent less frequently than kids in an “unsupportive” environment.
The heterosexual kids were also affected, and tried suicide 9 percent less in the positive social environment.
“The results of this study are pretty compelling,” said Hatzenbuehler in a statement. “When communities support their gay young people, and schools adopt anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies that specifically protect lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth, the risk of attempted suicide by all young people drops, especially for LGB youth.”
Put more simply: the words and attitudes of those with whom our kids come in contact matter bigtime. Those words and attitudes can, for some young men and women, mean the difference between life and death.
NOTE: When news of the study came out on Monday, various news outlets scurried to find out what other experts thought. Here are some of the responses:
Michael Resnick, a professor of adolescent mental health at the University of Minnesota’s medical school, said the study “certainly affirms what we’ve come to understand about children and youth in general. They are both subtly and profoundly affected by what goes around them,” he said, including the social climate and perceived support.
“While there are a small number of prior studies that have demonstrated that school climate makes a difference for LGB students, this study is important because it extends our understanding to the broader surroundings of the community in which students and schools are situated,” said Stephen T. Russell, a professor and director of the Frances McClelland Institute for Children, Youth and Families at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
MEANWHILE LEE BACA REACHES OUT TO MUSLIM COMMUNITIES WHILE LA TIMES ROBERT FATURECHI FOLLOWS THE SHERIFF ON HIS EAST COAST TOUR
Read the story here.