More LGBT Teen Attempted Suicide Study Shows @ Conservative Areas
by Cynthia S. Wright
Columbia University researcher and psychologist, Mark Hatzenbuehler recently published a study surrounding gay teens, conservative environments, and suicide attempts. His findings were published in the journal Pediatrics, where he discusses that the rate of suicide attempts by gay teens in politically conservative areas is higher than those teens that live in a more Democratic counties.
Hatzenbuehler attributes this to the idea that most schools in conservative areas don’t have programs supporting gay rights, the study even found a higher rate of suicide attempts even if the teens weren’t bullied or depressed but still lived in counties less supportive of gays.
Even though the research only focused on the state of Oregon, it has helped to create a social index that will help garner what specific factors contribute to suicide attempts.
The social index rated counties on five distinct measures: presence of same-sex couples, how many voters registered were Democrat, how liberal were the views, schools with anti-bullying policies in place, schools that had some sort of gay-straight alliance program, and schools that had a sexual orientation clause in their anti-discrimination policy.
The study shows that GLBT teens living in counties with higher social indexes had a 20 percent attempted suicide rate, while those that lived in lower scoring counties had a 25 percent chance of attempting suicide.
The study also noted that straight teens in counties with a low score, suicide attempts were 9 percent more common.
Out of the 1, 584 suicide attempts, there were 304 attempts from LGBT teens.
Dr. Robert Blum, of Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health believes that the study is important, even if the data isn’t that surprising, “Clearly, we need lots more understanding, but this is very much a step in the right direction.”
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