Adolescent health briefImpact of Victimization on Risk of Suicide Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual High School Students in San Francisco
Section snippets
Sampling
The current study used data from SFUSD's 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), a population-based survey developed by the CDC (84% response rate, n = 2,154 students in grades 9–12 across 15 SFUSD high schools).
Measures
Three suicide risk-related outcomes from the YRBS were analyzed as dichotomous dependent variables: sadness/depression (i.e., during the past 12 months, did you ever feel so sad or hopeless almost every day for 2 weeks or more in a row that you stopped doing some usual activities?),
Results
LGB youth reported significantly higher rates of substance use, victimization, and suicide risk-related outcomes than H youth (Table 1). Statistically significant ORs ranged from 3.3 to 6.2 across measured indicators.
No significant interaction effect between sexual orientation and victimization was found in the logistic regression models examining sadness/depression or suicide attempt. In both models, sexual orientation and victimization showed statistically significant main effects after
Discussion
No differential effect of victimization was found on the reports of sadness/depression or suicide attempts for LGB versus H youth. Controlling for demographics and substance use, victimization and sexual orientation were found to be significant risk factors for these two suicide risk-related outcomes. By contrast, there was a differential effect of victimization on reported suicide planning, with H youth reporting more severe consequences–a threefold increase in the odds of suicide planning for
Conclusions
Despite the sample size limitations of this study and its focus on relatively low prevalence outcomes, which can undermine statistical power because of low cell counts, the results do underscore the deleterious effect of victimization on suicide-related outcomes among both LGB and H youth in our school-based sample. Our results also confirm that more research is needed on other contextual factors and experiences beyond those measured by our models (e.g., family support, community
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the San Francisco Unified School District under cooperative agreement with the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (5U87DP001177-03).
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2022, Journal of School PsychologyCitation Excerpt :However, results from Dunn et al. (2017) indicated that although sexual minoritized girls experiencing any type of bullying were more likely to report past year suicidal ideation than heterosexual boys experiencing bullying (school bullying: adjusted OR [aOR] = 3.34, 95% CI [1.85, 6.04]; school and electronic bullying: OR = aOR = 2.86, 95% CI [1.65, 4.96]), sexual minoritized boys were only at increased risk relative to heterosexual boys when both school and electronic bullying were considered jointly (aOR = 2.56, 95% CI [1.38, 4.75]; Dunn et al., 2017). Two studies reported no statistical differences between the two populations for STB (Barnett et al., 2019) or suicide attempts (Shields et al., 2012). Barnett et al.'s (2019) findings are particularly striking because the researchers explored anti-LGB victimization (i.e., harassment in school based on perceived gender or sexual orientation) and did not find differential effects of victimization on suicidal ideation, suicide plans, or suicide attempts in sexual minoritized youth when compared to heterosexual students.
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