A new study finds that students bullied because they are believed to be gay are much more likely than others to be suicidal and depressed.
According to a large survey of students in Washington state, as many as one in seven eighth-grade boys and girls reported that the are victimized because of perceived sexual orientation.
The results, published May 16 in the American Journal of Public Health, doesn’t establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship between bullying and suicidal thoughts, but Donald Patrick, a professor of health services at the University of Washington in Seattle, says that “it’s clear that there’s an association, and I wouldn’t be so worried about the causation.”
“It has a profound impact on their quality of life and the way they think of themselves,” Patrick says. “Those in eighth grade are in a particularly vulnerable position.
Based on the new findings, bully-prevention programs must address kids picked on because of their sexual orientation, the study authors said.
The study is based on a 2010 survey of nearly 28,000 students in grades eight, 10 and 12. Among boys, 14 percent of eighth-graders, 11 percent of 10th-graders and 9 percent of 12th-graders reported being bullied within the previous month because they were thought to be gay. The numbers were 11 percent, 10 percent and 6 percent, respectively, for girls.
The survey defined bullying based on sexual orientation as being “bullied, harassed or intimidated at school” because they were thought to be gay or bisexual. Other types of bullying were also looked at, and most students reported an alternate form of bullying.
Compared to kids bullied for other reasons or not bullied at all, those targeted because they were perceived to be gay were much more likely to have considered suicide in the past year, to have been depressed in the past year, and to say they don’t feel good about themselves. For example, 26 percent of male 12th-graders targeted for being perceived as gay said they had been suicidal within the past year, compared to 8 percent of those not bullied.
Brian Mustanski, an associate professor in the department of medical social sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said that because the survey doesn’t establish whether those bullied are actually gay and not just perceived to be gay, “it is a major underestimate of the rate of bullying among gay youth.”
“While family and peer support have important positive effects for gay youth and reduce feelings of suicide and depression, you cannot ‘support away’ these toxic effects of bullying,” Mustanski said.
Photo: Joshua A. Bickel /AP
Very interesting. I would also be interested, more for research’s sake then anything else, to know of those bullied because they were perceived as gay, how many actually were gay and whether or not bullied heterosexuals perceived as gay were more likely to consider suicide than bisexuals perceived as gay, and homosexuals perceived as gay. I would also be interested in seeing a breakdown by sex. Are homosexual males perceived as gay more likely to consider suicide than homosexual females perceived as gay?