This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Lesbian, gay and bisexual youths who live in social environments that are more supportive of the LGBT community are 25 percent less likely to attempt suicide than their peers who live in less supportive places, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.
Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Columbia University psychologist and researcher, analyzed a survey of nearly 32,000 11th-graders in Oregon.
LGB youths were five times more likely than their straight peers to have attempted suicide. One in five gay teens said they had attempted suicide.
Hatzenbuehler rated the climates of counties in Oregon by measuring the proportions of schools that have anti-bullying policies that specifically protect LGB students, gay-straight alliance clubs and anti-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation. He also included the proportions of same-sex couples and Democrats living in each county as indicators of more supportive social environments.
"When communities support their gay young people, and schools adopt anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies that specifically protect lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth," Hatzenbuehler said in a statement, "the risk of attempted suicide by all young people drops, especially for LGB youth."
In Utah, the proportion of Democrats (9 percent of registered voters) and Republicans (40 percent) may not be a positive indicator for LGB youths, but the number of gay-straight alliances at public high schools has tripled this year, growing from 9 to 27. In December, Salt Lake City School District in a move that was considered a first for Utah approved a policy that forbids discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
More than half of Utah's 3,861 cohabiting, same-sex couples live in Salt Lake County, according to a Williams Institute analysis of the 2008 American Community Survey.