Suicide and LGBTQ2+

During our Learning session on November 18, Derek Kitchen mentioned the suicide statistics for young people in the LGBTQ2+ community.

I am posting a brief article about the US statistics regarding suicide and bullying. This was written by Liz Dryer and used with her permission.


October 18, 2018 is "Spirit Day," a day to consider how to stand up against the bullying of LGBT youths everywhere. Bullying and harassment, coupled with rejection, leads to this sobering statistic: LGBT youths are five times as likely to have attempted suicide as straight youth. This is a life issue. Please pray and work for an end to bullying of all kinds, and let the LGBT youth you know that they are God's beloved children and welcome in this beautiful world God created.
Here are the statistics:
• 85% of LGBT students report being verbally harassed.
• 63% of LGBT students report hearing homophobic remarks from teachers or the school staff.
• 57% of LGBT students feel unsafe because of their sexual orientations.
• 57% of LGBT students did not report experiences of bullying because they doubted that an intervention would occur.
• 63% of LGBT students who did report bullying said that the school did nothing or told them to ignore it.
• Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to straight youth.
• Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth seriously contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of straight youth.
• Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth who come from “highly rejecting” families are 8.4 times as likely to have attempted suicide as LGB peers who have reported no or low levels of family rejection.
• In a national study, 40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt, and 92% of these individuals reported having attempted suicide before age 25.
• Every instance of victimization of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth, such as physical harassment, or verbal harassment or abuse, increases the likelihood of self-harming behavior by 2.5 times on the average.
• Sources: The Trevor Project and GLSEN.


Egale has an excellent summary from Canada, that can be found here.


These are very sobering statistics. Affirming churches can help change these statistics.