Researchers at NYU and the Univers
ity of Arizona have been given $2.8 million by the National Institute of Mental Health to uncover why LGBT teens are at such high risk for suicide. Um, maybe because they get dumped on by their peers, parents and society?
We’d like our money now.
In all seriousness, though, it’s obvious something has to be done about issue of LGBT-youth suicides. More than 1,000 LGBT kids ages 15 to 21 will be interviewed in this survey, which will include participants from San Francisco, New York and Tuscon. “I really hope that through this study we can identify what makes a difference in schools and families to help LGBT youth,” said Stephen Russell, director of UA’s Institute for Children, Youth and Families.
But how useful is a study like this? Interviewing kids from large urban areas—especially gay havens like New York and SF—is hardly going to give you insight into what goes through the mind of a desperate teen in rural Mississippi or suburban Nevada. Nevermind the fact that getting anyone, let alone kids, to speak frankly to a stranger about sexuality and suicide is no cakewalk.
What’s more, its pretty hard to quantify something like suicidal thoughts. And are those thoughts because of being bullied, general teen angst or a clinical depression caused by something else?
Do we even know if gay-youth suicides are a rising epidemic? Or is the recent media attention just shining a spotlight on a longstanding problem?
That money could be better spent: Train educators on how to intervene in bullying situations. Fund public-school GSAs to give gay kids a safe space. Hell, buy them some body armor and a taser.
Source: International Business Times
verybookish
They’re interviewing kids in SF and NY? I don’t know what Tucson is like, but those have to be the two places in this country where it’s the most acceptable to be queer. How about interviewing some kids in West Virginia? Kentucky? Indiana? Pennsylvania? The places where people are actively preaching hate, and where it’s a lot harder to be queer.
John
How about states like Missouri, Kansas, or Texas? Its bad enough that the Midwest in
general is pretty much ignored, let alone the LGBT youth in these states.
Cam
Gee, so now Queerty is advocating for them NOT to do a study into gay suicides…what a shock.
“But how useful is a study like this? Interviewing kids from large urban areas—especially gay havens like New York and SF—is hardly going to give you insight into what goes through the mind of a desperate teen in rural Mississippi or suburban Nevada.”
True those areas are overall more gay friendly, but take a look at the stats and you will see that kids in those areas are also bullied. Funny how it never occurred to the author of this post that funds from the National Institute of Mental Health are to be used for studies like this….and NOT for teacher training. Those funds would come from a completely different area. But once again Queerty takes the position that anything that MIGHT help is something to complain about.
Let me guess, you are going to write an article about how a study is needed to see how much all of us nasty gay bully’s picking on him have hurt MArcus Bachman’s feelings.
Dan
This is a pretty ignorant post.
First of all, all of the things you mention that could use this cash require an evidence-base for implementation. You don’t just fund some random anti-bullying program because it seems like “a good idea.” That’s not how these things work, and brings to light your ignorance on the topic. Good luck securing funding for GSAs, or winning that fight, without some evidence [scientific, statistical, empirical] backing, especially in this political climate. The people at GLSEN, GLAAD, HRC, whatever, don’t just sit in a room and say “Hey! this seems like it’d work!” They review the available data, which is the kind of information this study will generate.
Second, these researchers wouldn’t have gotten funding for this study if they didn’t demonstrate significant capacity to do this kind of research… that means both prior experience and a high likelihood of future success. The fact that the feds funded this study means they believe this study has signficant potential, addresses a gap in knowledge/data, and will ultimately be used to improve people’s lives.
Third, it’s not “hard to quantify suicidal thoughts,” or the things that push these kids to the edge. Saying that just shows how clueless you are about scientific research. There are methods and questions that have been tested, re-tested, and tested again with thousands of people to make sure they’re a good way to capture this data.
Fourth, criticisms of the NYC/SF limitation are valid. But hey, we’ve got to start somewhere. And if researchers in other areas were up for this work, they’d have applied for funding or would have been funded.
As someone who works in research, your ignorance really struck a chord with me. Securing this kind of money for research is grueling, and every penny has to be fought for. The people doing this type of work work their butt off. It pisses me off that within our own community[ies], you’d pen this kind of stupid, ignorant, dismissive piece the way you’d write off some trite reality show. This kind of work needs all the support it can get. While that doesn’t mean it’s immune to criticism [see my point #4 above], don’t just dismiss this in one fell swoop. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but don’t talk out of your ass.
Cam
@Dan:
Thank you!!
AxelDC
I’ve had 3 gay Mormon friends kill themselves. I’d say their lives are worth at least $1 million a piece.
kylew
@Dan: I agree with you. I can see where admin was coming from, but I think he just didn’t think things through. That’s the trouble when you get to say whatever you like BEFORE it is discussed by others – sometimes you only see one aspect of things. I actually believe in their geenerally good intentions, but like all of us, they sometimes put their foot in it.
kylew
@AxelDC: Yes, absolutely. Totally.
Dr. Jones
As a research psychologist, the ridiculousness of this post strikes me as incredibly humourous. These people have been testing in the mental health realm for literally decades, I think they know better than you, you conceited queen.
Kev C
According to one prevailing theory, they do it because they’re attention seeking lemmings. Look at me! I’m jumping off a cliff and putting it on Youtube! Love Me!
Haightmale
This blog post is news commentary. I know that when bloggers inject personal opinions, that we might deem to be insensitive, or if the opinion contains too much hyperbole, or there aren’t any factual or verifiable statements to support an opinion – that people get upset. This blog post bothers me because it involves health – and if you’re not a doctor or clinician with the education and experience to express an opinion – you could hurt people. If the CDC commissions a mental health study, the study is going to be providing answers and data sets that they don’t currently have. In order to deploy more resources to combat a public health problem, they have to be able to demonstrate a need, and have concrete data to support what they want to do. That is what a study like this is going to provide. They need more studies like this.
http://www.jiveinthe415.com/
To suggest that the money would be better spent training teachers to police bullies is much more problematic. There are 4 strategies to deal with a bully – and every teacher with a license knows this. There are always co-factors that determine the course of action an educator pursues – and the teachers in this country are very capable of dealing with bullying. It’s the cultural shift that is the hard part. Most kids know that they will make life more difficult for themselves if they are a tattle tale, or if they snitch. Teachers have to observe the bullying behavior and much of it happens away from school or when teacher’s aren’t close by. Kids refuse to tell on other kids. Parents and teachers have to start working together to address our cultural norms, in order to find effective solutions to these complex problems.
Dan Avery is a good guy, and I have no problem giving him the benefit of the doubt here. His experience with mental health issues is probably limited. I could write so much about this, and I do write about mental health issues and the affect on teens and adolescents, and adults, on my blog because there’s a need for common sense information. I had a kid email me recently and he asked if I would explain why hate speech is so bad, so I wrote him about what I knew from my own experience, and from what I’ve learned professionally. I’ve started writing about it more and more
http://www.jiveinthe415.com
There is an epidemic of suicides affecting gay males between the ages of 11 and 24 that has been transpiring for the last 2 – 3 years, and it’s continuing and not getting better. For every kid that succeeds, there are 8 to 25 kids who you never hear about because the statistics are reflected under an injury or self inflicted harm. The numbers are staggering.
The largest populations of homeless gay teenagers in the United States are New York and San Francisco. Kids hitchhike, and take greyhound buses, and leave home for a myriad of reasons. These homeless gay kids are not natives of NY or SF. They arrive looking for the emerald city or the wizard of oz, and they find Fagan 9 times out of 10. This is why HIV infection rates in 18 to 25 year olds are spiking. There is usually a depression component etc. The suicide epidemic is real and I wrote about it this week.
It is incredibly easy to quantify and document suicidal thoughts for a clinician or patient. There is a direct correlation between being bullied, the onset of depression, and development of a major depressive disorder. Bullying causes unhappiness and despair. If that “state of being” manifests itself for extended periods of time as an adolescents, the odds increase significantly that depression will be a health issue for one’s lifetime.
Kev C
@Haightmale: I could question your use of the term “epidemic”. Suicide rates for lgbts have always been high. For some demographics, it’s huge, as much as 14 times normal. Not for a few years but for decades. Has bullying increased in recent years? Yes, perhaps, although bullying has always been a motivating factor for gays to take action such as running away or suicide.
What really has changed is coverage and straight awareness of these issues. It seems paradoxical, but as gays gain more visibility and acceptance, they also provoke more homophobic reactions and innappropriate responses. Straight people have been FREAKING OUT about gays recently. 10 years ago, Uganda would not have considered death penalties for gays. 10 years ago, this large, prestigous study would not have been done. Bullying has increased, and suicide has increased.
The reality is that society doesn’t have an answer on how to handle bullying. Teachers, schools and parents are inept at dealing with these issues. So what do they do? They blame the victims of bullying and seek to silence and control them because they’re weak and easy to control. They don’t do a damn thing about bullying, but silence those who are complaining about being bullied. Such a reaction.. by responsible people is likely to increase suicide rates.
Erik
@ Verybookish, I see your point, but stereotyping those states all together like that is a bit problematic. You would do better to point out that the sample should be more representative from different regions of the United States, from different SES, and from different environemnts (rural, suburban, urban). It would be unfair to assume that all LGB youth from New York City or San Francisco have an easy, suicide-ideation-free life, too.
Actually, it is not difficult to quantify suicide ideation, suicide intention or suicide attempts.
And wouldn’t the question “do we even know if LGB suicides are a rising epidemic?” be the purpose of the study? Not to be picky.
Please don’t join the ranks of the Tea Party who suggests we should defund the NIH (less than 1/10 of 1% of the national budget). Also, please take a Research Methods course somewhere, just because we’re queer, doesn’t mean we have to ignore science and scientific methods (even the social sciences).
Steve
The principle thing that is needed to prevent teen suicide is, of course, an effective program of suicide prevention. We don’t know, yet, what program elements are most effective, or how best to provide them. We do know that teen suicide is a problem — even one suicide is a tragedy. But, the question of how to prevent suicide most effectively is largely unanswered. That question is, of course, the main focus of most suicide research.
It is extremely irresponsible to suggest that such research is wasted. In public health, just as in many areas of science, “common sense” often turns out to be wrong. Research to discover the actual causes of the problem and effective methods of prevention, is not wasted. Each such study contributes to the knowledge base. The results will steer public policy on suicide prevention for generations to come. Each research has the potential to save many lives.
What is truly wasteful is committing to large long-term programs without knowing that the programs are effective. Program decisions have to be made on current knowledge, of course, but the research will allow future decisions to be made on the basis of better knowledge. And, research results are a principle means of obtaining authorization and funding for clinical and school programs. School administrators and public health professionals understand science and statistics. They need the research to justify the spending.
Ongoing research to understand the causes of the problem, evaluate the effectiveness of current prevention methods, and to test proposed methods, is the means of improving the future.
mike
@Dan: Your corrections are correct except regarding the survey areas.
It is the researchers are from the University of ARIZONA and NEW YORK University; the survey is NATIONWIDE.
Click the link to the real story, not the idiotic Queerty misinformation.
Kenny
Yep. Homosexuality is so accepted in San Francisco that a guided field trip through the Castro sparked a huge controversy among many parents. Get real, Queerty.
MKe
Oh man I would like some of that money too! I have several theories on why they kill themselves and what could stop it!
Sue Your School
Kids who are bullied in their schools for their sexuality better read sueyourschool.com and force change upon a broken system.