Less American teens attempted suicide in states where same-sex marriage was legitimate in the years paving the way to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling maintaining gay marriage, according to a new study.
The study disclosed analyzed information from 1999 to 2015, and found a 7% decrease in suicide attempts among high school students in the 32 states that authorized same-sex marriage. The study also said that there was a 14% declined among students categorized as sexual minorities, particularly gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
Over 29 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual high school students across the country reported to have attempted suicide throughout the past 12 months, compared to about 6 percent heterosexual students, according to the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System data, whose long term data analysts depended on for the study, Los Angeles Times reported.
Laws that have the greatest impact on homosexual adults may make gay children feel "more confident for the future," lead creator Julia Raifman, an analyst at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Associated Press.
The review which was distributed in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday didn't prove the drop in teenager suicide attempts was caused by the practice and implementation of same-sex marriage policies, however it suggested a link between the two factors. Researchers analyzed the information from more than 700,000 young people across 47 states from year 1999 and 2015, of which 231,413 recognized as gay, lesbian or bisexual. The data however didn't track students who recognized as transgender or queer.
Researchers recognized the finding was constrained in that they depended on self-detailed information from students. They also noted they couldn't represent financial status, religious alliance, acknowledgment of sexual minorities and different factors outside of the sanctioning or legalization of same-sex marriage.
The study expressed that there is a requirement for further research to comprehend the relationship between sexual minority rights, stigma and sexual minority wellbeing.
