In a study of 137 gay and bisexual youth, Remafedi et al. (1991)
reported that effeminate gay male youth were three times more like to
attempt suicide than other gay male youth(31).
Speaking about this reality in a small group, a male Air Canada flight
attendant also told me that he had known more gay males who had
committed suicide than died of AIDS. Such life experiences occur
because the gay community is cellular in nature. Many gay males now
know more gay males who have died from AIDS than from suicide.
The result of this study are most often noted without telling the
reader that, with respect to the attempted youth suicide problem, the
data may not reflect the present situation for GLB youth. The data
also does not reflect the situation as it existed when the study was
published.
These figures represent estimates for suicide attempters, and not the
percentage of suicide attempts (to the age specified) which would be
attributable to predominantly homosexual males. The fact that some
individuals will attempt suicide more than once must be taken into
consideration when making such estimates.
A major recent study (as well as others) has reported on "the
pervasiveness of different forms of victimization in the lives of
lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth."(64:50)
This was also the conclusion
of The Massachusetts Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth in
its 1993 report, Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth:
Breaking the silence in schools and in
families(65). Other papers and
a book have been written on the subject (66-70)
Books on adolescent suicide have a history of silence about GLB youth
being (or probably being) at risk for attempting (and possibly
committing) suicide. See Appendix B for a
summary. Some minor
progress, in this respect, has been made since 1991. This includes
the recent publication of the 1995 Supplement of Suicide and
Life-Threatening Behaviour: Research Issues in Suicide and Sexual
Orientation, also noted in Appendix B.
All pamphlets and booklets on suicide and youth suicide available in
Calgary, Alberta, were reviewed. Homosexuality has not been mentioned
in them. One exception occurred in 1992 in the pamphlets about youth
problems (including suicide) made available by Calgary's Canadian
Mental Health Association which has been responsible for suicide
prevention in the Calgary area. As the result of my work, a gay and
lesbian youth group had been referenced, although nothing specific to
GLB youth problems was noted in the pamphlets. By 1995, however, there
are no references to GLB organizations in the new version of the
pamphlets. There is also no mention of GLB youth and their high risk
for having many problems, including suicide attempts.
Calculated by Dr. Christopher Bagley.
Savin-Williams(1994) reports that studies of "homeless and runaway
youths" had produced estimates "in the 2%-to-3% range." Noting the
high concentrations of gay and bisexual youths missed by their
sampling method, he then emphasized that these "percentages are
probably a gross underestimation because few youths are likely to tell
authorities and staff their sexual identity." The higher estimates
given above, as obtained by professionals (who knew how to get
homosexual orientation information from adolescents) were then cited
(35:264).
During the summer of 1995, a CTV Canada AM segment outlined the
problems of street youth in Toronto in the light of a program recently
implemented to help them. It was noted that depression was a major
problem for these youth, that their suicide attempt rate was about
50%, and that a significant number of these youth were gay, lesbian,
or bisexual.
Memory(1989) calculated the American suicide rate for juveniles in
juvenile detention centers in 1978 to be 57/100,000/year, and
juveniles in adult jails to be 2,041/100,000/year, compared to the
rate of 12.4/100,000/year for males aged 12-24.
(43:460-461). A
summary of the Canadian prison situation with respect to the elevated
suicide and attempted suicide problem for inmates was given in Suicide
in Canada(1995), but nothing specific to juvenile and young adult
offender was mentioned. Suicide rates for federal penitentiary
inmates have ranged from 87-197/100,000/year, compared to
12.7-14.8/100,000/year for the general male/female population
(101:25-27).
In 1990, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States
reported that studies had produced lifetime adolescent attempted
suicide rates ranging from 9% to 14%(44:1011). The range given by Garland &
Zigler(1993) is 6% to
13%(9:170), but studies not representing
lifetime rates were including in the tally. Males also attempt
suicide at lower rates than females, meaning that 25% to 30% of
adolescent suicide attempters are
male(9,45,46),
and the lifetime
attempted suicide rate for adolescent males would therefore range
between 2.2% and 5.2%. The rate for a group of young adult males,
having a mean age of about 23, as in the Bagley et al.(1994) sample,
would also be a little higher than the reported lifetime adolescent
rates.
The Canada Youth & AIDS Study(1988) reported that, for the Grade-7
youths in their study sample of 38,002 Canadian youths, 45% believed
that "homosexuality is wrong," only 33 believed that "homosexuals
should be allowed to be teachers, an still fewer (18%) reported that
they "would be comfortable talking with a homosexual
person."(108:7,73)
Therefore, at the age when the average GLB youth
are discovering their homosexual desires, there is a 60% to 80%
probability that they will respond negatively to discovering such
inner realities. If they were taught to have a murderous hatred for
homosexuals, this hatred may be turned on themselves, yielding suicide
problems or other behaviours, such as projection. Their hatred for
homosexuals may be vocal, thus intensely hating in others what
essentially exists in themselves. A number of GLB have reported going
through such a stage. Some males in this category even have sex with
gay males, but then assault them, and may even kill them. Money(1988)
has labelled the phenomenon, well documented in gay history, "the
exorcist
syndrome." (109:110)
With such responses they are 'saying':
"I am not like him. I am not homosexual, I hate homosexuals." Other
pathologies may also result from socially induced self- hatred.
One of the reasons why these youth may be really trying to kill
themselves may be related to the knowledge that failure will result in
intervention, thus forcing them to tell others what, in many cases,
they did not want to even accept about themselves. That is, they will
have to "out" themselves. One Calgary gay youth I met at the age of 14
had attempted suicide by hanging soon after his thirteenth birthday.
When he regained consciousness after the failed attempt, which he had
evaluated to surely result in his desired death after he failed to
locate a gun, he panicked. Members of his family would now discover
the truth about him, because he will have to explain why he did this.
He invented an explanation for the bleeding burns on his neck to avoid
revealing the real reason for his injury.
A gay male in Calgary attempted suicide at the age of 10 by throwing
himself in front of a car. He was taken to the Alberta Children's
Hospital where they sought to discover the reason why he did this. At
that age, he already knew he could not tell the truth to anyone. At
the age of 20, when he came out to his mother, the reason why he had
attempted suicide was revealed. His mother wrote his story for a
presentation to officials in the Calgary Board of Education, and it is
now part of The Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Factor in the Youth Suicide
Problem(107).
Another gay male (interviewed at the age of 19)
attempted suicide at the age of 14 and was in hospital for 1.5 months
before he revealed the reason why he had wanted to die: because he was
gay. He only admitted this fact about himself after his older lesbian
sister came out to him while he was still in hospital. To this date
he has needed help but has only been harmed by mental health
professionals. After assimilating the historical facts he was giving
me, I asked: How the hell do you cope? The answer: "I drink until I
black out."
The closet factor has been so pronounced for GLB youth involved
with professionals that the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Commission's Adolescent Program had never, until September 1995,
encountered a youth who revealed his/her homosexual orientation on
intake. They have now had their first experience in this respect with
two gay youth I know. Their adolescent treatment professionals have
not yet been educated and trained to effectively address GLB substance
abuse problems, and all the GLB issues which factor into these youths
having such problems.
One of the suicide attempters in the Bagley et al.(1994) sample was
homosexually active in the "occasional" category, and two were in the
"regularly" category. This means that gay and bisexual young adult
males are 8.4 times and 3.8 times more likely to have attempted
suicide than heterosexual males.
Male victims of child sexual abuse most often code their abuse to have
been homosexual acts, and they are correct, even though it is mostly
heterosexual-identified males who sexually abuse boys. Homosexuality,
by definition, is male-male sexual behaviour occurring between
same-sex same-species individuals. For this reason, the Journal of
Homosexuality has published papers on male-male paedophilia, and
bisexuality. For the same reason, the book, Ritualized Homosexuality
in Melanesia(1984) edited by Gilbert Herdt, is correctly titled. It
describes the ritual of older males repeatedly having sex with boys
(sometimes beginning at the age of 8), most often lasting for a number
of years.
CTYS also produced the 1988 book, Often Invisible:
Counselling Gay and Lesbian Youth(71)
and the 1992 video Pride &
Prejudice: The Life and Times of Lesbian and Gay Youth.
They are not the only ones who have avoided addressing GLB youth
issues, often for "fear" reasons. In the spring of 1994, I was meeting
with a gay/lesbian mental health professional and expressed my
feelings given that Calgary's only youth group had folded due to lack
of support. "What really troubles me is that not one gay or lesbian
mental health professional in this city has ever come forward to help
GLB youth." The reason supplied to explain this was fear, given that
there was "too much to lose" if anyone ventured out alone to help
these kids. Now, Calgary had a GLB youth group, I-DENTITY, with about
130 youth, and a multidisciplinary group of more than 30 gay, lesbian,
and heterosexual professionals working to help GLB youth and educate
professionals about GLB youth problems. The group is based in Family
Therapy in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, and
Dr. Gary Sanders (Associate Director of Family Therapy), Dr. Joel
Fagan (former president of the Alberta Pediatric Society) now living
in Victoria, B.C., and myself, were responsible for its inception.
One of the major reasons why the GLB youth attempted suicide problem
has about doubled in the last 40 years may be related to the age of
self-identification which has dropped from about the age of
18-19(21)
to 14 and 15(31,110).
Remafedi et al.'s 1991 analysis of gay and
bisexual males reveals that, for each year of delay in this process,
the risk of an attempted suicide decreases
by 80%(31).
Two recent AIDS studies (reported on in the gay media) have revealed
that a significant relationship exist between gay males who contract
HIV, a sense of fatalism, and a history of child sexual and physical
abuse(111,112).
These factors would be predictable given the
information rendered in this paper. A 1995 study of 136 14- to
19-year-old GB youth concludes with: "[The intervention these youth
have been getting in New York] is far more comprehensive than what is
available to most homosexual and bisexual youths nationally, and yet
the results of this study indicate that [GB] youths who are most
distressed require even more intensive intervention to change their
sexual risk behavior." "Emotional distress, substance abuse, and
conduct problems are linked to HIV-related behaviors and may interfere
with preventative efforts... HIV-preventative programs need to be
offered in the context of comprehensive health and mental health
care."(114:594)
Given the information made available by the journalist about Bobby
Steele, he would have been classified to be homosexual by the Shaffer
et al.(1995) researchers. However, the method they used to identify
gay or homosexually active male youth victims would have resulted in
classifying him to be heterosexual.
The Advocate is the flagship publication of the American
gay/lesbian community. The first cover story "Teen Suicide: The
government's cover-up and America's lost children", was published on
Sept. 22, 1991,
and the second, "Suicidal Tendencies: Is sexual orientation causing gay
and lesbian teens to kill themselves?" on April 8, 1994.
A soon to be published paper by Bagley et al. will report the results
of a study of 1,087 Grade 7-12 boys and 1,025 girls. "The results
suggest that experiencing unwanted sexual contacts in families and
community are a major risk factor for poor mental health and frequent
suicidal behaviors in adolescent males and females. In making this
conclusion we assume that there is a direct causal link between
sexual assault and mental health impairment."(83, emphasis mine.)
At the time of writing, the numbers in this category was only
available for 700 of the 750 males studied. The Bagley results may be
more valid that the 1994
Sex in America study. Even though this study
used a random sample of 3,432 men and women, there would have been
only 400 males in the 18- to 27-year-old category. The Bagley random
sample contains almost twice the number of males, thus producing
statistically more significant results, at least for estimating
homosexual realities in the young adult male population.
Gonsiorek et al.(1995) reviewed the exiting studies and doubled
Diamond's 1993 5% estimate(86). "[T]he
available research suggests
that the prevalence of predominant same-sex orientation (i.e., regular
behavior or substantial attraction or both) in the United States is
currently in a range from 4% to 17%, with the most reliable estimates
likely in the middle of that range"(86:47),
or about 10%. The
Bagley(1994) results are more in support of this estimate than
Diamond's 5% estimate.
This reality about boys having sex with men is highly taboo. The boys
know this and will usually not tell anyone, including parents,
teachers, or peers what they are doing. About one-third of gay males
report that they had sex with a man before the age of 15, because they
wanted to. These boys are also at great risk for contacting HIV, but
most AIDS prevention work have ignored their existence.
[Main Page]
25 Nov 1995