Gay & Lesbian Youth Suicides

According to a study published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Gibson, 1989), gay and lesbian youths are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than other youths, and 30 percent of all completed youth suicides are related to issues of sexual identity. Proctor & Groze's article in Social Work continues to pile on grim statistics such as the above, as study after study indicates the severity of the problem of gay and lesbian suicide.

Youth suicide as a social problem has continued to mount in the past several decades, and there is no indication that the trend will diminish. Proctor & Groze cite Holinger's 1978 study to note that the suicide rate among young people rose 300 percent over the two decades before 1980. Gay and lesbian youths are at an increased risk for suicide because of the particular discrimination they suffer as homosexuals; in addition to the added stress they face as a result of their orientation, they may have to conceal their sexuality from peers and adults. Thus, they are damned if they "come out," or, make their orientation public knowledge, and they are damned if they conceal, or repress, their sexual feelings from a hostile society. They are indeed in a double-bind situation from which a staggering number never do extricate themselves.

The reasons that some gay and lesbian youths are psychically better off than their suicidal counterparts are purely conjectural, but common sense and a meager number of studies have sh

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one who is taught to be powerful, aggressive, and dominant--a forceful initiator of sexual activity. A masculine triad of traits include: (1) the concept that violence is manly; (2) an element of callous sexuality; and (3) the concept that danger is exciting. The researchers hypothesized that the yin and yang of hyperfemininity and hypermasculinity would result in a report that "Women high in hyperfemininity would report greater attraction to the macho man . . . and be more tolerant of coercive sexual activity (Maybach & Gold, 1994, p. 92). As predicted, women low in hyperfemininity reported significantly less attraction to, and interest in, dating the man in the nonconsensual sexual scenario (coercive sexual activity) than did women high in hyperfemininity (Maybach & Gold, 1994, p. 96). Another way to state this finding would be: women low in hyperfemininity are less willing to tolerate nonconsensual sexual behavior from men than are women high in hyperfemininity. The experimental design to test the hypothesis discussed above appears valid, but the sample, consisting of midwestern college women is certainly not representative of a cross section of American women. A cross section of American women would most likely yield e

Category: Psychology - G