Reuters (2/10, Rapaport) reports, “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,” research indicated.
MedPage Today (2/10, Hlavinka) reports, “Substantial recent increases in the percentage of teens and young adults reporting they are not heterosexual were accompanied by a decline in suicide attempts among sexual minority youth,” investigators concluded after examining “survey data” derived from “Massachusetts high schoolers who participated in the federal Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance Survey” for the years 2009 to 2017. Specifically, those data revealed that “the proportion of adolescents disclosing a minority sexual orientation in 2017 was 14.3%, up from 7.3% in 2009,” while “during the same period, suicide attempts declined among sexual minority as well as heterosexual youth.” Even so, “sexual minorities were still significantly more likely than heterosexual youth to attempt suicide in every year of the study,” research revealed. The findings were published online Feb. 10 in Pediatrics.
Related Links:
— “Suicide rates fall among sexual-minority youth but still outpace heterosexual peers, “Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, February 10, 2020