LGBT bullying doesn’t ‘get better’
Discrimination, harassment and assault of LGBT youths is still very much a problem for about a third of adolescents, a Northwestern Medicine study found. What’s more, it’s often very severe, ongoing and leads to lasting mental health problems such as major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“We tend to think that society is evolving but we can’t just accept this narrative that ‘it gets better’ and think it gets better for everyone,” said Brian Mustanski, an associate professor in medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the new Northwestern Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.
Mustanski was happy to see that the majority of the 248 youths in the study (84.6 percent) experienced decreasing levels of victimization over the four years. But 10.3 percent experienced significant increases in bullying, and 5.1 percent maintained high levels of victimization over the four years. Mustanski was struck by just how severe the treatment was.
“With bullying, I think people often assume ‘that’s just kids teasing kids,’ and that’s not true,” Mustanski said. “If these incidents, which might include physical and sexual assaults, weren’t happening in schools, people would be calling the police. These are criminal offenses.”
Mustanski is the lead author of the study published in The American Journal of Public Health, which was innovative because it looked at not only the number of victimizations teens were experiencing but how severe they were and how they changed over time.
The LGBT youths who were at the highest risk for mental health problems were those who experienced moderate harassment (i.e. having something thrown at them) that increased over time or adolescents who continually experienced high levels of victimization (i.e. physical or sexual assault) over the course of the four years.
Accumulation of victimizations was the key difference in Mustanski’s study from previous research that focused on a single period of time. While a single incident can have an impact on a young person, Mustanski’s study found that an adolescent’s depression and PTSD was exacerbated when these assaults built up over time. And even youths who began high school getting severely bullied but were lucky enough to see that lessen over time were still at a higher risk for PTSD.
Overall, he said it is important to note that the majority of targeted LGBT youths are doing well and are “resilient,” but for the group of adolescents getting severely victimized, something drastic needs to be done.
He hopes the study’s findings will help schools clearly see these patterns of LGBT bullying so they can intervene with policies and programs to help prevent the behavior and provide coping mechanisms for those who are being targeted.
