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UA professor Stephen T. Russell has received a two-year grant to look at the factors that may lead to suicide among LGBT youth.

By La Monica Everett-Haynes, University Communications
May 22, 2008

It is widely known that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth face discrimination, but less is known about the factors that make them twice as likely to attempt suicide.

University of Arizona professor Stephen T. Russell is determined to find out using a study that gathered information about students from their teenage years through young adulthood.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has just provided Russell with a two-year "distinguished investigor" grant totaling nearly $100,000 that will allow him to study suicide risk among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, LGBT, youth.

Russell, a John and Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences professor, is one of the few researchers who has studied the experience of LGBT youth in school. He published the first national results showing LGBT youth are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide.

In his proposal for the grant, Russell wrote that his study will attempt to explain “the sexual orientation disparity in suicide ideation and suicide attempts among U.S. adolescents through the examination of risk and protective factors that characterize the important contexts of adolescents’ lives: individual emotional and behavioral health and risk, family and peer relations and the school environment.”

Russell, whose project is titled “Explaining the Sexual Orientation Disparity in Adolescent Suicide Risk,” will use a large national survey that contains information from more than 20,000 students who were surveyed in seventh through 12th grades and followed over six years.

The data will be pulled from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the only study in the United States that includes sexual orientation, suicidal tendencies and information about what shapes adolescent development, said Russell, an expert on adolescent ethnic and sexual identities and sexual health.

“The potential is not only to study the adolescent years, but also the transition into the young adult years,” said Russell, who holds the Fitch Nesbitt Endowed Chair in Family and Consumer Sciences.

“The study will allow me to follow kids into the young adult years and do a better job of understanding factors – school, family life, faith, friends and peers – that contribute to or ameliorate the risk for suicide and other mental health problems,” he added.

The National Adolescent Health Information Center reports that suicide is the third leading cause of death among those age 10 to 24, yet little information is available that is specific to LGBT youth.

Russell already is widely known for his work among LGBT youth and, in recent years, has published papers and organized events, including a research symposium at the UA that focused on LGBT issues in the school setting.

Jennifer Vanderleest, a UA clinical assistant professor in family and community medicine, said what makes Russell's research important is that it is comprehensive.

"There are more and more investigators including the lives and experiences of LGBT youth in their research, but one of the really interesting things about Stephen's study is that he's using a national data set," Vanderleest said.

While it is generally understood that sexual minorities face discrimination, the factors that lead to suicide risk among such groups are not always understood, she noted.

"They’ve certainly been ignored," Vanderleest said, adding that Russell's research "will be powerful in looking at the multiple reasons why LGBT youth are at risk of self-harm instead of simply looking at sexual orientation and gender identity as a risk."

Russell wants to be able to identify risk factors for suicide and will also try to determine what roles prejudice, discrimination, victimization, depression and anxiety play in suicidal behavior. His results also will inform suicide prevention and intervention programs and efforts designed specifically for LGBT youth.

“For example, some people say we need to create support systems so kids who might be gay will have access to other people who are like them, but we’ve never really tested that,” said Russell, who also directs the UA’s Frances McClelland Institute for Children, Youth and Families.

“We don’t really know whether that works. So, one hope is that my study will be able to at least determine if that might be a promising area of study for future research," he said.

Not all of the students in the dataset identified themselves as LGBT, but a large survey “allows us to do intensive study of those kids who do have same-sex attraction or who identify as gay or lesbian while also doing a comparison of the majority population of youth,” Russell added. “That’s not typically possible in most studies of adolescents.”

The Needs of Transgender Youth

Last year, Russell and Vanderleest coordinated a "research cluster" under the UA's Institute for LGBT Studies that focused on issues relevant to individuals who are transgender.

The institute's clusters bring together researchers, faculty, students and the general public to study a common issue or theme through a series of conversations and events.

Russell and Vanderleest chose to focus on transgender youth and health-related issues. They intend to publish an article later this year detailing their findings and suggestions.

"There's not a lot in the literature about the health status of trans-identified youth," Vanderleest said, adding that most of the research has come out of the psychological disciplines even though the issues are much broader than mental and emotional impulses.

What they also found is that health care providers and trainees in the community generally do not know how to address the needs of their transgender patients, she said.

"Very often, they don't even know how to have a conversation with a youth who may identify as gender diverse or transgender," Vanderleest said.

The paper will address issues related to school victimization and safety issues as well as the more traditional health issues that can also help physicians and families, she said.

"As a melding of our mutual interests – Stephens's work with LGBT adolescents and my clinical work with transgender people and training of health care students and practitioners – we identified a need to address the lives of transgender youth," Vanderleest said.