The Bluer the Oregon County, the lower the Gay-Teen Suicide Rate

from "Top of the Ticket"

Andrew Malcolm's political commentary in the L.A. Times

April 18th, 2011

In a newly released study primarily focused on gay-teen suicide rates in Oregon, some interesting details were discovered. The numbers of suicide attempts by gay teens went down by 20% in counties whose schools had anti-bullying, anti-discrimination policies and/or a Gay-Straight Alliance. The suicide rate was also lower when the proportion of Democrats was higher in the county.


A community that was supportive of gay teens not only curbed suicide among gays, the study found, but also lowered the rate of suicide attempts by heterosexual students by 9%.

Researchers led by Mark Hatzenbuehler looked at five aspects of the social environment surrounding gay, lesbian and bisexual youth on a countywide level: the proportion of schools with anti-bullying policies specifically protecting these students; the proportion of schools with a Gay-Straight Alliance; the proportion of schools with anti-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation; the proportion of same-sex couples; and the proportion of Democrats in the county. Then they rated each of Oregon's 34 counties based on the results of those findings.

The study found that a more supportive social environment was associated with 20% fewer suicide attempts than an unsupportive environment. A supportive environment was also associated with a 9% lower rate of attempted suicide among heterosexual students.
"That suggest that when you create environments supportive for lesbian, gay and bisexual youths, it creates a healthier environment for all youths," Hatzenbuehler told Oregon Live.

Of the 1,400 of teens surveyed, 4% to 5% identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Of those students, nearly 22 out of every 100 said they had attempted suicide in the last year. Only 4% of kids who identified themselves as heterosexual said they had attempted suicide.
"Regardless of your views, our data suggest that the inclusion of Gay-Straight Alliances and anti-discrimination programs can have really important mental-health outcomes for our youths," Hatzenbuehler told CBS News. "This is a road map to how we can begin to reduce teen suicide."

Hatzenbuehler studied children in Oregon -- through responses from nearly 32,000 11th-graders in 2006, 2007 and 2008 -- because it is the only state that tracks sexual orientation and suicide attempts in enough detail to compare social factors.

Suicide Risk May be Lower for Gays, Lesbians in 'Supportive' Areas

Suicide risk may be lower for gays, lesbians in 'supportive' areas


http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-suicide-gay-teens-20110418,0,6131754.story

Suicide risk may be lower for gays, lesbians in 'supportive' areas

Los Angeles Times - Marissa Cevallos

By Marissa Cevallos, HealthKey
April 18, 2011, 4:15 p.m.


Lesbian, gay and bisexual teens are much more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers, research has shown, but a new study suggests that a supportive school and community might be able to reduce that risk, if only slightly, for both groups.

Researchers from Columbia University analyzed a survey of 31,852 Oregon 11th-graders in which the students were asked, among other things, about their sexual orientation, drinking habits, and whether they had attempted suicide. The researchers also scored 34 of Oregon’s 36 counties on how supportive of gays and lesbians the environment was based on the proportion of same-sex couples in the community; the proportion of registered Democrats in the community; whether schools had gay-straight alliances; and whether schools had anti-bullying and antidiscrimination policies specifically protecting lesbian, gay and bisexual students.

In a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, the researchers confirmed that homosexual and bisexual students were far more likely to attempt suicide than their classmates—nearly 22% compared with 4%, a tragic gap researchers already knew existed. But they also found that among gay, lesbian and bisexual students the risk of suicide was about 20% greater in negative environments than in supportive ones—25.5% of non-heterosexual students had tried to commit suicide at least once in negative environments compared with 20.4% in positive environments.

RELATED: Medical records and health studies should track sexual orientation and gender identity, report says

Negative environments were associated with suicide attempts in non-heterosexual students even after adjusting for known suicide risks such as depression, alcohol use, and past physical abuse by an adult.

The researchers wrote in their conclusion: “The social environment appears to confer risk for suicide attempts over and above individual-level risk factors. These results have important implications for the development of policies and interventions to reduce sexual orientation–related disparities in suicide attempts. “

The study doesn’t conclude that a community’s so-called supportive characteristics, such as anti-bullying policies in schools, decrease suicide attempts, says Brett Thombs, a researcher in psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal who was not involved in the research but who has studied suicide risk in non-heterosexual youth.

“I think there are many reasons schools should provide better environments for any kid, not just LGBT kids,” says Thombs. “Whether or not they would change suicide risk is a different question. The schools may be reflecting the community around them.”

Positive environments seem to offer a slight protective benefit to heterosexual students as well, as it turns out. They were 9% more likely to attempt suicide in so-called negative environments than they were in more positive environments.

The study doesn’t answer whether adopting anti-bulling policies could be as effective in schools where the community is unsupportive of gays and lesbians. A large randomized trial, where some schools adopt accepting policies and others don’t, could better answer that question.

But that could take a while to do. And teenage years are short.

RELATED: 9 million U.S. adults say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, study finds

RELATED: The bluer the Oregon county, the lower the gay-teen suicide rate

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/04/teen-suicide-rates-drop-in-in-blue-counties.html


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