Religion, Sexual Orientation, and Adolescent Suicide

• In Event: 2-196 - "Power, Love, and a Sound Mind?": Religion and Mental Health for Diverse Youth

Integrative Statement

For over a century social scientists have viewed religion as a protection against suicide (Stark, Doyle, & Rushing, 1983). A recent meta-analysis confirms this notion (Wu, Andrew, Wang, Jing-Yu, Jia, Cun-Xian, 2015). On the other hand, a major risk factor for suicidality is sexual minority status (e.g., LGBT sexual orientation; Miranda-Mendizábal et al., 2017). There is concern, actively expresses through various media channels, that religion may actually be a risk factor for sexual minority teens, rather than a protective factor. Some scholarly evidence suggests some validity to this concern (Gibbs & Goldbach, 2015; Shearer et al., 2017), but further research is needed to understand the connection between religiosity and suicidality for sexual minority teens. The present study examined these questions among teens from various religious orientations ranging from those with no religious affiliation to those from highly traditional denominations.

The sample included 932 teens (M age = 14), recruited from Utah and Arizona (65% Mormon, 9% Catholic, 11% Protestant, 15% None). The high number of Mormon teens allowed for analysis of a denomination with highly conservative norms against sexual relationships outside of heterosexual marriage. In addition to religious affiliation, we also measured various dimensions of religiousness including religious involvement, religious importance, spirituality, positive religious coping, religious doubt, interpersonal spiritual struggles, ideological spiritual struggles, and negative religious coping. Suicidality was measured by summing three items: suicidal ideation, planning, and attempts, rated on the following scale: 1 (No), 2 (Yes, but not in the last year), 3 (Yes, in the last year).
We first conducted a MANOVA comparing religious affiliations (coded dichotomously as Religiously Affiliated vs. None) and sexual orientation (coded dichotomously as heterosexual vs. Other) on suicidality. Religious None teens were significantly more at risk of suicide than Religiously Affiliated teens. Sexual minority teens were significantly more at risk of suicide than heterosexual teens. However, there was no interaction between religious affiliation and sexual orientation; sexual minority teens were not more at risk if in religious organizations. When running the same analysis with religious affiliation as three categories (Mormon, Other Religions, and None), Mormons and teens from Other religions were not significantly different in terms of suicidality, but both groups had significantly lower suicide risk than None teens. Next, we examined correlations between the various dimensions of religiousness and suicidality, and compared those correlations across sexual orientation. For both sexual orientations, religious involvement, religious importance, spirituality, and positive religious coping were negatively related to suicidality (i.e., they were protective). However, religious doubt, spiritual struggles, and negative religious coping were positively related to suicidality (i.e., they were risk factors). Although the patterns of correlations were the same across sexual orientations, the correlations were larger in size for sexual minority teens.

In conclusion, sexual minority status was a risk factor for suicide, as was being religiously unaffiliated, but sexual orientation did not interact with religious affiliation. However, the degree to which certain dimensions of religiousness are helpful or harmful may be exacerbated among sexual minority teens.

Authors

• Sam Hardy, Brigham Young University
  Presenting Author

• Michael A Goodman, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Justin Dyer, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mark D. Ogeltree, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author