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Damn.
They just don't make epidemics like they used to......
Was he embarrassed it aired during Glee?
Dan - thanks for IGBP. This commercial was soooo tasteful, too. Cheers.
Makes me glad I watched Glee!!
And by "awesome," I mean "inspiring awe," not the cheap, trivial meaning the kids usually make of it. It Gets Better should go on your tombstones. Well done, guys!
"An article in the December issue of APA's Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology points to a possible cause of seemingly higher rates of suicide among LGB and transgendered (LGBT) youth: discrepancies between what gay youth report about suicide attempts and what they're actually doing.
The article, by Cornell University's Ritch C. Savin-Williams, PhD, reports on two studies that conclude that even though sexual-minority teens are more likely than heterosexual youth to report suicide attempts, half of those reports are false--that is, the young people had thought about suicide but hadn't acted on it. In addition, Savin-Williams found, many of the true attempts the young people reported weren't life-threatening.
"When you ask in-depth questions about suicide attempts, the responses you get account for the rate differences between heterosexual and sexual minority youth suicide," Savin-Williams says. "The heterosexual youth had hardly any false attempts, while those with same-sex attractions had a lot of them."
In one of the studies, 23 percent of 83 young sexual-minority women said they'd attempted suicide at least once. On further questioning, though, 29 percent of the reported attempts turned out to be false, and 80 percent of the true attempts were not life-threatening, Savin-Williams writes. The one exception was a small number of young women who were part of a support group, whose rate of actual suicide attempts was much higher than others in the sample.
In the other study, Savin-Williams compared reported suicide attempts in 126 young sexual-minority young people and 140 young heterosexual men and women. Again, while sexual-minority men and women were far more likely to report suicide attempts than heterosexual subjects, the two groups showed similar rates of true suicide attempts.
The findings suggest that gay youth are vulnerable to the media's and researchers' well-meaning but negative depictions of gay youth as highly troubled people heading on a collision course with life, Savin-Williams maintains.
"There's a script we have in our culture--a 'suffering suicidal' script--that these kids have picked up on," he says. A better approach for researchers, teachers and other youth workers, he believes, is to treat all young LGBT people as ordinary kids with great potential, unless they show research-based or visible indicators of suicide risk."
Thanks for this, I hadn't seen it, truly amazing. Made me weepy.
Good Morning Canuck!
Do battered partners stay in bad relationships because we have a cultural narrative that says DV survivors are too weak to leave?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/techno…
In the same way, @35 and @42 refer to different sides of the same existing situation. Both are true, but not equally important at the moment, I suspect.
Best I can tell, the study doesn't claim to be definitive, but serves to suggest a possible downside to kids if suicide prevention messages devolve into smarmy solicitude. Not too difficult to see there may be something to that. But that has to be set against the benefits unfolding before our eyes.
Kids are self-reporting on YouTube that the experience of watching these videos, and the very fact of this trove of supportive messages, has helped them. Though the study suggests kids may or may not overrate the truth of that (teen drama is what it is), it's undeniable that because kids are expressing relief there in fact is some for them. That's always welcome in a teen's life, no?
Add to that the huge numbers of adults also reporting genuine relief themselves from the anxiety all the suicides have caused them. Huge numbers of grownups believe they've been able to help kids who are or will be hurting by the simple act of putting up for display the videos they've taken of them talking about themselves supportively. And millions more adults would never post a video but are delighted and relieved IGBP continues to grow.
Add to that the cultural power of uniting LGBT kids and adults and allies in a high-profile mutual support effort under the banner of altruism, and it's clear we're all well on the beneficial side here.
So proud of these fellas!
So thanks for that.
but the guy who said "I dont even know you and I love you" is what started my household weeping.
I am so happy to be alive in this time.
Dan Savage, Messenger. Love it.
If it's something else I might be able to figure it out still. Though I just switched back to Firefox after a yearlong Chrome experiment (talk about relief!), I do still have it in my apps.
Most; if not, literally, all; kids are taunted and teased about something by someone.
Fat, pimples, brainy, skinny, dumb, wrong religion, wrong accent, wrong colour, wrong sport, etc., etc...
Many of them come from crummy homes and don't find refuge or support there.
Some of those kids will crack under the load of their particular burden, most won't.
The cold hard fact of life is that life is hard and you have to toughen up to some extent to survive.
The good news is that the great majority of kids, whatever they are bullied for, will cope and get/be strong enough.
This is true of ALL kids.
The problems with IGB are that it
>Glamorizes the suicides of kids who are gay (or who homosexual activists can suggest in any small way were brushed by the gay...) and focuses HUGE attention on them, which is exactly the opposite of the way teen suicide should be handled
and
>it throws all of the responsibility onto some great malicious evil out there and absolves the kids of any responsibility to cope themselves.
"You're gay?! Oh-poor dear; it's a miracle you haven'y killed yourself already..."
Teen depression is real but it is treatable.
Creating a ghetto of Cool Gay Kids with Special Needs and blaming everything on the Bad Bad Christians is poor mental health care.
"Me and some friends are sodomy at the mall. Call you later!"
Of course, I texted back, "Some friends and I."
-- completely cracked me up. I know it was unintentional, but thanks, @26!
Plus Google is for profit and Firefox is nonprofit. I'm pretty easily had on that front....
Honestly, this is why I don't have children. It would be an 18-year-long anxiety attack.