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Thursday, February 23, 2017

Same-Sex Marriage Laws Linked To Powerful Drop In Teen Suicide Rate

Tolerant societies have healthier, happier citizens. Period.

Living in a community that recognizes gay marriage can improve the mental health of all teens, according to a new study.

State marriage equality laws enacted in the years before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling were linked to lower rates of suicide attempts among all high school students but especially among teens who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or unsure. Ultimately, the researchers found, for every year that same-sex marriage laws were in place, 134,000 fewer teens attempted suicide.

This is noteworthy because queer teens are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as their straight peers.

While the study doesn’t demonstrate that these laws actually caused a reduction in suicide attempts, lead study author Julia Raifman theorized that having equal protection under the law may account for much of the change.

“These are high school students so they aren’t getting married any time soon, for the most part,” said Raifman, a post-doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a statement about her research.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It just proves that LGBTXYZ is a mental illness which is not tolerated by more stable peers. Pandering to them is just that.

Anonymous said...

This might be accurate. However, overly tolerant societies create deviants!! Our society as a whole is not healthy. This is just more propaganda. Teen suicides might be down - how about inner city murders? They down?

Jim said...

This may be a temporary phenomenon, because statistics also show that the suicide rate among transgenders who have the surgery are much higher than average.

This article may be more propaganda than truth.

Anonymous said...

whew...glad you shared that... I feel better now. less depressed.
Been married too long, thinking I was gay since I haven't had sex with a woman in so long!!