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LGBT people and suicidality in youth: A qualitative study of perceptions of risk and protective circumstances

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posted on 2018-06-27, 10:50 authored by Ian Rivers, Cesar Gonzalez, Nuno Nodin, Elizabeth PeelElizabeth Peel, Allan Tyler
Evidence suggests that lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people are more likely to attempt to take their own lives in their youth when compared to heterosexuals. This study draws on in-depth interviews with 17 LGBT individuals living in England, and explores the narratives used by participants to better understand their perceptions of risk and protective circumstances to explain suicide attempts in youth. Using a Goffman-informed thematic analysis, results identified three key themes that were linked to attempts to end life in youth. The first theme considers the conflicts resulting from first disclosure of sexual orientation and being ‘out’ to others. The second theme explores participants’ accounts of their concurrent mental health issues and how diagnoses of the mental health issues helped them make sense of their own experiences of attempted suicide. The final theme explores the experience of grieving over lost relationships and how that grief is received by others, including health professionals. Our results indicate that some LGBT individuals have effectively, although often arduously, navigated suicidal crises by utilising various approaches to coping. We provide a rich and layered picture of LGBT suicide risk in youth and potential resilience scenarios, although these are a reflection of our specific group of participants’ experiences and realities. We argue that it is important to understand how LGBT individuals with a history of suicide attempts narrate and make sense of their experiences in early life and we suggest that the early negative experiences continue to have an effect on LGBT adults today.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Published in

Social Science and Medicine

Citation

RIVERS, I. ...et al., 2018. LGBT people and suicidality in youth: A qualitative study of perceptions of risk and protective circumstances. Social Science and Medicine, 212, pp. 1-8.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-06-12

Publication date

2018-06-30

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Social Science and Medicine and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.06.040

ISSN

1873-5347

Language

  • en