Feature, not bug. Driving queer people (especially queer youth) to suicide lets them turn around and say "look! see what the homosexual lifestyle does to you?!" to the next generation of victims. Anyone plausibly lower than a Kinsey 7 gets "scared straight"; everyone else is a burnt offering that YHVH apparently approves of.

I hope that would be a wake up call to the religious counselors. LGBT people can face rejection or the fear of rejection in even the most liberal family or community, but religious beliefs add an entirely new dimension. Acceptance and expression are going to be healthier than ostracizing and suppression.

It's worth noting that this shows correlation, not causation. It is easy to believe that LGBTQ folks who are predisposed towards looking for religious counseling are also more predisposed to commit suicide. If it was a controlled study, we could say that religious counseling drives LGBTQ people to commit suicide.

I would hope that therapists who practice gay affirmative therapy would have better results.

So... mental health treatment does fuck all?

Assuming that licensed, ethical mental health counselors are not telling LGBs who come to them that they are disordered pedophiles who are an abomination unto the Lord, and that clergy are telling them exactly that, one must read this article and say, DUH.

Nothing gives a religious zealot a harder spiritual erection than the idea of someone (not themselves) suffering the agony of burning in hell forever and ever. Amen.

Religion itself is a form of mental illness. So, no surprise there.

Wrong to say no one could have predicted, I think many sophisticated mental health professionals might have ventured a sad guess that religion-based counselors as a group would contribute to the despair of some LGB people. As a psychologist I've heard the occasional hateful story of people seeking help from a clergy person, even in NYC fairly recently, who passed on a message about wrongness, sin, etc.

I'd also hope to see somebody do some more research in which the mental health professionals were sorted as to their own positions about non-heterosexual orientations, and I'd hope to see that LGB people suffering suicidal despair were in fact helped not to act on it if they talked to professionals who understood them. For that matter I'd like to see data sorted by profession of the mental health people, as some are much better trained in the counseling role than others, with psychiatrists unfortunately at the bottom of the heap in that regard at present, though likely to be consulted in an emergency. Virginia Kelley PhD. NYC

@10, are you new to Dan Savage? Is your sarcasm meter broken? "No one could've predicted" was obviously a sarcastic closing comment. Dan has been railing against religious bullshit for years, maybe decades.

@1 - I agree with you that at least for some religious conservatives, it is indeed a feature, not a bug. And yes, every time a gay person commits suicide, many of them do jump up and down about how intrinsically disordered they think we gay people are, rather than examining the role they've played in creating a hostile and unhappy environment for those gay people.

But at the risk of sounding pedantic, I think your Kinsey scale is off, unless I've missed your point. The scale goes from 0 to 6, so everyone would be below 7. Perhaps that was your point? But also, 0 means totally straight and 6 means totally gay, so perhaps you meant anyone above 0?

In any event, I agree with your overall point.

The role of therapy from a medical professional is to help the patient understand themselves and learn to accept what they cannot change. You know, cope better with reality, and all that.

The role of counseling from a religious minister depends hella much on the denomination of the minister. Sadly, in a majority of cases, it's to convince their parishioner that God wants them to change. Which we know is somewhere between highly unlikely and physically impossible.

Some minority of denominations, those we call "welcoming" and "accepting" would counsel similarly to a medical professional, along with something similar to, "God loves you and wants you to be happy. You're part of His plan. We all love you just as He made you." But here's the thing... If you're a member of one of these accepting denominations, you're probably less likely to be seriously depressed/conflicted in the first place or need that type of counseling.

If I had to guess, seeking mental health treatment didn't have much impact because there is a serious lack of LGBTQ mental health training, and most "gay friendly" therapists and just straight people who mean that they're "non-judgmental". The difference between seeing a "gay friendly" straight therapist and an LGBTQ therapist who actually knows what you're talking about because they've been there themselves and knows of resources that you don't is HUGE.

People who seek counseling are probably already among a group that has a higher odds for suicide. So I would say it is impressive that LGB that seek (non-religious) counseling do not have a higher suicide rate. Even if you disagree with that, there's no denying that this statement contains a logical fallacy: "IF a group that seeks counseling has the same odds of attempting suicide as the general population THEN counseling doesn't help". Still, the results of the study are evidence that obtaining religious counseling is unhelpful relative to regular counseling.

I think sweet g is onto something.

I remember the first time I went to a medical doctor in San Francisco where most doctors have experience with gay patients. I was asked things, and had things checked, that no other doctor had and I immediately realized this was the difference with seeing a doctor who was familiar with the issues the specific population you are a part of faces.

I also think that with therapists isn't just that the LGBTQ therapist will have experiences closer to yours and understand you better, but they are probably also more likely to have sought out actual training on dealing with issues specific to LGBTQ people.

Also on the other side I think that as non-judgmental as straight but gay friendly therapists may be, they may not even understand when they don't understand.

I think a lot of therapists who have never experienced something like depression know they don't really understand what the person is going through even if they recognize the symptoms because without experiencing something like that it is very hard to understand it. But I think most don't even realize that they don't understand what gay people go through because they never really considered the differences in our experiences.

I would like to see a study next that compares the effectiveness of therapy for LGBTQ people when seeing a non-LGBTQ therapist without specialized training and a either LGBTQ therapists or therapists who have specific training on working with LGBTQ patients.

Surely people going to see a Religious counsellor, is, on some level, very aware what sort of advice will be given. Even a liberal religious person saying " god loves us all as we are", still has a ring of patronage about it.

@11 You're right I didn't recognize the sarcasm - I actually hadn't particularly thought about it being DS' voice, just saw it as thing he'd passed along,

I'd now like to know if the religious do any better with non-LGB depressed people.

@2 It won't be a wake up call to religious groups who are so in the dark ages about human sexuality. We need to steer young people away from the destructive influence of their "churches" and give them some real guidance for their future. The church does not have any understanding or tolerance for gay persons, it is a destructive atmosphere for a struggling individual who can't find out what is going on in their lives.

Considering how high the trans suicide rate it, I'd be curious to see a study that addresses that in the context of counseling (since they seem to have been omitted from the study).

WTF, do you guys know nothing about interpreting statistics? Let's see, let me make a study where group 1 is healthy people, group 2 is people with infected injuries whose wounds are cleaned and bandaged and who are given antibiotics, and group 3 is people with infected injuries whose wounds are cleaned and bandaged but are not given antibiotics. If group 3 has worse outcomes than group 1, that clearly means than cleaning and bandaging infected wounds is a bad idea. *facepalm*

Now, it's entirely possible that religious counseling may be worse than no counseling at all. But this study doesn't show that. This study doesn't show anything at all. First, there's no reason to think the three populations were equally healthy before any counseling started. At least, I think that it's a reasonable proposition that the people who didn't seek counseling were, in general, less suicidal than the people who did, and if the study's designers didn't think that, they needed to give evidence why not. The study's abstract doesn't mention any attempt to compensate for that potential issue: if anything the designers seem positively determined to pretend it's not there. I can see why they did that: it's not easy to imagine an ethical study design that would resolve that issue. (An example of an unethical study design which would resolve that issue would be arbitrarily denying treatment to randomly selected sample of people who asked for and were otherwise entitled to treatment, and then comparing outcomes of people who asked for and got treatment with outcomes of people who asked for but didn't get treatment.) But doing it the lazy way fatally compromises the study.

Secondly, even the study's authors mention that the people who sought religious counseling were disproportionately black. Considering that religious counseling is generally free and medical counseling is generally not free, I'm guessing that the people who sought religious counseling were disproportionately poor, too. Gee, Black/poor people had worse medical outcomes than middle class people? Now there's a shocker. Clearly it's because they received any care, at all.

Frankly, you guys' anecdotes about religious attitudes is much better evidence for your points than any of the so-called "statistics" in this "study".

PS: I was going to say that whatever scientific journal published this crap should be ashamed of itself. But looking at the *press release* (not abstract), I see that they don't claim that any scientific journal published it. Somehow, I'm not shocked.

OK, /rant over.

Thanks, Old Crow.

Old Crow,

It's because the entire article is bullshit, however it is standard operating procedure for the media, and there are currently several publications whose purpose is not to preform scientific experiments, but rather to be a "reliable" source for any bullshit claim a journalist or politician publishes.

However, even if there was not the typical racist undertone in the originally published, unscientific, and likely fabricated source, I wouldn't be surprised if people who do not 100% conform to a heterosexual white anglosaxon sexual identity and sought counsel from a religious organization, would come to find it didn't help much

most of the major religious denominations have a seriously flawed, negative official position regarding homosexuality.

they may have may attempts to tone down their very wrong opinion, however in many ways the increasing level of subtlety that's used to communicate their flat out wrong opinion is more damaging in the long run.

It becomes a source of confusion in their life which can often have dramatic affects in a person's life.

The swarm idiocy of journalism appears to be of the opinion that so long as the damage is purely psychological, and not physical AKA "real" then no harm no foul

and that is fucked up and wrong opinion to have, at least when it is denied or otherwise not admitted to

perhaps when a real study is preformed and if the data concluded that mental health counsel have no affect on suicide attempts, I would hope that the researchers were not affiliated with the media because if they were not, they would likely be smart enough to discern that the reason is NOT a mental health issue

It is NOT a mental unwellness

It is a societal disease

more specifically a disease wherein the swarm of idiots attempts to influence individuals lives' in areas they have absolutely no right to intrude or influence

this disease is especially damaging when influence escalates to enforcement

It -- like most diseases -- is a very gender specific disease in that trampling of an individuals rights by the swarm of idiots, is a movement started, perpetuated and lead by male members of the society

it's just what happens when morons are not recognized as such

for some reason, any moron who can write with decent grammar has a virtual impenetrable force field that will cloak even the greatest levels of idiocy

it is common occurrence in patriarchy

the same as Dan and Matt's ignorance blinds them from seeing it is in no way their right to influence a person's decision to make private aspects of the life available for public scrutiny, most religious leader are --- like Daniel and Matthew --- much too stupid to realize the difference between Freedom and Oppression by wrongful control

God would offer a life in Heaven without a choice

having no choice in personal private matters is Hell, which is distinguishable from Heaven to even the epitome of stupid females, but for some reason religious leaders and male sloggers whom are often viewed as intelligent, are absofuckingluting clueless

@25: http://images.cryhavok.org/d/20831-1/Top…

good one venomlash, I take it your view on one of the major problems with this world is religion

whereas I am hopeful you begin to practice honesty, which after enough practice you will stop ignoring the truth and recognize the problem with Humane Being, is gender specific, specifically males

The problem is people who are blind to this, on both sides of the fence (those who cannot live in a world where God exists AND those who cannot live in a world where God does not exist) and rather then face the truth of the limit of their knowledge of this world, they make shit up.

The shit they make up is usually to either comfort their little boy world of fallacy, or to harm the opposing side of their God/No Good Belief System

I am sick of stupid boys, but convenient belief systems are far more popular and trendy than doing the work it takes to understand the truth of reality

I am also sick of the people (including women) who allow little boys to further threaten Humane Being's future existence in this world

Why should their choice of dying instead of living be ultimately forced on all of US?

Fuck that, Fuck them, Fuck You

Venomlash : it does take a little effort to be sure.
Just not sure who Matthew is, is that a biblical reference? And isn't Daniel such a lovely name?

Oh hey, Dirtclustit.

Dirtclustit, I do have a fantasy that the women of the world stage a revolution. Men are escorted from the buildings of power and commerce and they can tend the house, children, garden,
whatever , then women, and only women make the decisions.
Be interesting to see how we would deal with things. I believe, the world situation, overall, would be better.

Venomlash@26: Any sufficiently advanced mental illness is indistinguishable from the output of a Markov-chain gibberish generator, and vice-versa.

A.A. will and HAS does as much damage on the desperate and in need of last resort consolation, acceptance and support.
Shaming an individual with individual identity and personal ideals from a secluded group mentality is always dangerous and it needs outside influence to counterbalance any obscure inequities.