“You can't break…when you're already broken”: The importance of school climate to suicidality among LGBTQ youth

ABSTRACT

Suicide has been a longstanding problem among sexual and gender minority youth in Canada. The goal of the article is to examine the link between suicidality and school climate within a theoretically informed framework and a mixed methods approach. Qualitative and quantitative findings are presented using data from more than 3,700 secondary students from the National Climate Survey of Homophobia and Transphobia in Canadian Schools (Taylor & Peter, 2011a). The findings show that even modest efforts to shift the balance of heteronormative discourse on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) students can have profound effects on the experiences and perceptions of sexual and gender minority youth, which we argue would go a long way in reducing incidents of suicidality among LGBTQ youth. In many jurisdictions across Canada, LGBTQ-inclusive policies have attempted to improve school climates and reduce the effects of homophobia and transphobia in schools. These initiatives, along with the work done by Egale Canada to create a National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy, are important steps in addressing the needs of LGBTQ youth.

KEYWORDS:

• Discrimination
• suicide
• youth

Funding

This study was funded by a grant from Egale Canada Human Rights Trust.

Disclosure

The authors have nothing to disclose.

Notes

1. In this article we focus on evidence of homophobic and transphobic features of heteronormative school climate. For a peer-reviewed presentation of the findings with significance testing, see Taylor and Peter, 2012. For a more comprehensive presentation of findings from the quantitative data analysis, including significance test results, see Peter, Taylor, Ristock and Edkins (2015), Peter et al. (2014), and Peter and Taylor (2012). For a related analysis of qualitative and quantitative data in the context of human rights discourse, see Taylor and Peter (2011b). See also our textbook chapter in Peter and Taylor (2012), where we discussed some aspects of the evidence presented here for a readership of sociology students.

2. The study was commissioned by the Egale Canada Human Rights Trust (ECHRT) with additional funding from the University of Winnipeg Major Research Grants Competition, and Sexual and Gender Diversity: Vulnerability and Resilience (SVR), a research team funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Fonds de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FRSC) du Province de Québec.