Oregon study finds fewer suicide attempts in Dem counties

A new study published in Pediatrics that found a correlation between the number of registered Democrats and lower numbers of suicide attempts among gay teens has caused quite a ruckus in the blogosphere.

The study, led by Columbia University psychologist Mark L. Hatzenbuehler, used five measures to determine how "supportive" an environment was towards gay youth. Three of the factors involved school environment: whether anti-bullying policies mention lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) students specifically; if schools have gay-straight alliances; and if anti-discrimination policies include sexual orientation. The other two factors were the proportion of same-sex couples in the county and the proportion of registered Democrats.

The study found that LGB teens overall were five times more likely to attempt suicide than straight teens. However, in counties that scored high on the "supportive" factors, LGB teens were 25 percent less likely to attempt suicide than LGB teens in less supportive counties. Moreover, in the supportive environments, suicide attempts by straight teens were 9 percent lower.

The results were reported with a focus on the blue-red divide. "The bluer the Oregon county, the lower the gay-teen suicide rate," the Los Angeles Times titled their write up. (The headline is incorrect: The study's data covered self-reported suicide attempts among 32,000 11th-grade students in Oregon, not actual deaths by suicide. There's no good data on the sexual orientation of those who have died by suicide.)

Hatzenbuehler controlled for self-reported "depression, binge drinking, peer victimization, and physical abuse by an adult" in order to isolate the environmental factors affect on suicides, according to Columbia's write up of the research. "Previous studies have shown those kinds of individual level risk factors matter," Hatzenbuehler said on MSNBC. "But, we were sort of pulling back a little bit in the study and trying to understand not on an individual level what puts people at risk for suicide, but is there something about the social context in which youth live that places them at risk?"

Ann Haas, research director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, tells The Lookout that while she understands the Columbia researchers hoped to identify the role of social factors on suicide attempts, individual experience of mental illness matters. Haas has argued mental illness is ignored when gay youth suicide is discussed. Studies estimate that about 90 percent of people who die by suicide were suffering from a mental illness. "It would be great if future studies would include a much fuller measurement of both individual-level and environmental factors," said Haas.

Haas also notes that the prevalence of same-sex couples in a community is not necessarily representative of that community's tolerance for LGB youth. Recent Census data has found that communities in the South have the most co-habiting same-sex families, for example, even though Southerners show low support for gay marriage in polls. Haas is also not sure the correlation between registered Democrats and a gay-friendly environment makes sense, especially since the surveys were done between 2006-2008. "There was really very very limited support among Democrats for marriage equality [then]," she says. "It wasn't as though the Democrats were really distinguishing themselves by being out there on the issues."

Hatzenbuehler said on MSNBC that he doesn't want people to focus on the political affiliation aspect of his study, but that he included it as a factor because "previous studies have shown that political affiliation is associated with attitudes towards gays and lesbians."

That fewer straight kids attempted suicide in gay-friendly counties suggests that something else might have been going on in that county, beyond the five factors Hatzenbuehler studied, Haas says. "Did they have greater accessibility of youth-oriented mental health services for example? It's kind of hard for me to see how support for LGBT people would carry over to lower suicide attempt rates for heterosexual youth," she says.

Haas stresses that the presence of depression or other mental disorders is the "key underlying factor for suicide." Bullying puts kids at a much higher risk for developing depression, which then puts them at a higher risk of attempting suicide. But the mental illness link in that equation is crucial.

(Key West residents unfurl a banner for National Coming Out Day in Florida: AP.)