Ethnic minorities aren’t the only groups who need special attention when it comes to assessing the risk of suicide. So do sexual and gender minorities, says Peter Goldblum, PhD, a professor emeritus at Palo Alto University in California. “Sexual and gender minorities are at elevated risk for suicide,” says Goldblum. “This is a marginalized, stigmatized group.”
One key risk factor is rejection by family members. In a study of 3,458 transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals participating in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, psychologist Sarit A. Golub, PhD, and graduate student Augustus Klein of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that more than 42 percent reported a suicide attempt (LGBT Healthopens in new window, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2016). And as rejection levels increased, so did the chances of suicide attempts.
Violence can also increase suicide risks. Drawing on data on more than 1,900 young people—13 percent of them sexual minorities—from the Chicago Youth Risk Behavior Survey, Alida Bouris, PhD, MSW, of the University of Chicago and colleagues found that almost 30 percent of the sexual-minority youth reported at least one suicide attempt in the past year, compared with 12 percent of the heterosexual youth (LGBT Healthopens in new window, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2016). The research suggests that two factors indirectly increased suicidality in this population: being harassed for their sexual orientation or gender identity and being threatened with or injured with a weapon.
Most screening instruments “miss out on issues related to stigma, discrimination and the history of nonacceptance for being a sexual or gender minority,” says Goldblum, who helped develop a screening instrument that includes factors relevant for ethnic, sexual and gender minorities (Archives of Suicide Researchopens in new window, online first publication, 2017). “By adding questions related to one’s group identity and the problems related to being a member of that group, you increase the accuracy of the screening instrument.”
In fact, Goldblum and colleagues found that adding such cultural factors boosted the accuracy of predictions of suicide attempts by 8 percent (Death Studiesopens in new window, e-publication ahead of print, 2018). —Rebecca A. Clay
