A new study in the USA has suggested that living in a gay-friendly environment can reduce the risk of attempted suicide among teenagers.

The article ‘The Social Environment and Suicide Attempts in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth’ was published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday. Its author, Mark Hatzenbuehler, studied the experience of LGB teenagers living in various parts of the USA state of Oregon. He found that suicide attempts were lower among those who lived in areas where there were higher numbers of LGB couples, and who went to schools with anti-discrimination policies and that that had gay-straight alliances.

Over a period of three years, Hatzenbuehler questioned teenagers in 34 of the state’s counties about sexuality, relationships, depression and alcohol. He assessed whether social environments were supportive or not by tallying the number of schools with anti-discrimination policies and gay-straight alliances, the number of same-sex couples living in the area and the number of Democratic Party members.

Around 22 in 100 of the teenagers who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual had tried to kill themselves in the preceding 12 months. Those who lived in areas that were socially unsupportive were approximately 20 per cent more likely to attempt suicide than those in supportive environments.

There have been previous academic investigations into suicide attempts among LGBT teenagers, but before now, none has looked at the reasons why more lesbigay teens try to take their own lives than heterosexual peers.

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