Youth suicide rates are dropping in the U.S., but the proportion of teens who have suicidal thoughts or make an attempt remains consistently higher among sexual minorities than among heterosexual young people, two new studies in Pediatrics suggest.

One study looked at suicide rates among teens between 2009 and 2017 and found young people who didn’t identify as heterosexual were more than three times as likely as those who did to attempt suicide. A second study looked at this same connection from 1995 to 2017 and found suicidal thoughts, plans and attempts were all more common among sexual-minority youth.

“Numerous studies going back to the late 1990s have consistently shown that sexual minority youth are about three times more likely to report making a suicide attempt,” said Brian Mustanski, co-author of an editorial accompanying both studies, and director of the Northwestern Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing in Chicago.

“The fact that societal acceptance for the LGBTQ community has improved significantly in the past decades raises the important question of (whether) these disparities in suicide attempt have shrunk over time,” Mustanski said by email. “The two studies . . . are some of the first to show that sexual orientation disparities in suicide attempts have not been shrinking over time.” Read more via Reuters

Raifman, Julia, et al. "Sexual orientation and suicide attempt disparities among US adolescents: 2009–2017." Pediatrics (2020).

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Sexual minority adolescents face mental health disparities relative to heterosexual adolescents. We evaluated temporal changes in US adolescent reported sexual orientation and suicide attempts by sexual orientation.

METHODS: We used Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance data from 6 states that collected data on sexual orientation identity and 4 states that collected data on sex of sexual contacts continuously between 2009 and 2017. We estimated odds ratios using logistic regression models to evaluate changes in reported sexual orientation identity, sex of consensual sexual contacts, and suicide attempts over time and calculated marginal effects (MEs).

RESULTS: The proportion of adolescents reporting minority sexual orientation identity nearly doubled, from 7.3% in 2009 to 14.3% in 2017 (ME: 0.8 percentage points [pp] per year; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.6 to 0.9 pp). The proportion of adolescents reporting any same-sex sexual contact increased by 70%, from 7.7% in 2009 to 13.1% in 2017 (ME: 0.6 pp per year; 95% CI: 0.4 to 0.8 pp). Although suicide attempts declined among students identifying as sexual minorities (ME: −0.8 pp per year; 95% CI: −1.4 to −0.2 pp), these students remained >3 times more likely to attempt suicide relative to heterosexual students in 2017. Sexual minority adolescents accounted for an increasing proportion of all adolescent suicide attempts.

CONCLUSIONS: The proportion of adolescents reporting sexual minority identity and same-sex sexual contacts increased between 2009 and 2017. Disparities in suicide attempts persist. Developing and implementing approaches to reducing sexual minority youth suicide is critically important.