Same-Sex Marriage Policies Linked to Lower Suicide Attempts, Study Says

As governmental and public support has shifted in favor of same-sex marriage in the U.S., research published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics now links policies legalizing same-sex marriage and lower adolescent suicide attempts.

For people between 15 and 24 years old, suicide is the second-leading cause of death, with sexual minorities experiencing an even larger risk possibly due to stigma, according to a news release.

Researchers analyzed state-level Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System data for 1999 through January 2015, looking at approximately 763,000 teens before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the U.S. in June 2015, The Washington Post notes. The self-reported data was collected by asking teens if they had attempted suicide one or more times in the last year.

The authors juxtaposed changes in public high school student suicide attempts from both before and after 32 states legalized same-sex marriage to those in 15 states that didn't allow same-sex marriage.

Prior to same-sex marriage policies, 8.6 percent of all high school students and 28.5 percent of sexual minority-identifying students said they attempted suicide. The results showed that same-sex marriage policies were linked to 0.6 percentage point dip in suicide attempts, or more than 134,000 fewer adolescent suicide attempts. This indicates a 7 percent decrease among high school students claiming to have attempted suicide in the past year.

Still, gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers attempt suicide at a rate four-times higher than straight teenagers, according to the Trevor Project. Another study from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found that 30 percent of transgender youth said they attempted suicide at least once.

Mark L. Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University notes in an editorial along with the study that there are also other factors at play.

"... Numerous laws and policies affecting sexual minorities remain openly contested, including lack of protections related to students' sexual orientation (and gender identity) in harassment and/or bullying laws, which are currently covered in only 19 states and the District of Columbia,"

Hatzenbuehler wrote in the editorial. "Studying these and other laws in future research will provide important information regarding the generalizability of the results of the study by [author Julia Raifman] and colleagues.

The study's limitations include that the data is self-reported and the authors couldn't account for socioeconomic status nor malleable state characteristics such as religious affiliation or sexual minority acceptance. It also doesn't look at possible causation.

"As countries around the world consider enabling or restricting same-sex marriage, we provide evidence that implementing same-sex marriage policies was associated with improved population health," according to the study. "Policymakers should consider the mental health consequences of same-sex marriage policies."

The authors also called for more research to study the connection with sexual minority rights, stigma and sexual minority health.