- The second theme to emerge from the interviews was located around participants’ mental health. 
- Here narratives addressed the presence or co-occurrence of mental illness as they grew up. 
- In line with a lay biomedical account of mental illness, participants’ emphasized the significance of their mental health problems in their desire to commit suicide.

Arizona State University

- These findings offer an insight into the complex and often multifaceted experiences of a sample of LGBT adults who recounted their narratives of growing up – often in hostile or unaffirming environments. 
- Experiences of rejection by intimate partners, peers, friends and, not
insignificantly, family members represent a thread we see running through all of our participants’ stories.
- Several themes were identified across participants. 


- Theme 1: Conflicts of being ‘out’: Stressors associated with LGBT suicide attempts in
early life.
- Theme 2: Concurrent mental health problems.
- Theme 3: Grieving over lost relationships.

Results of the Study

Rivers, I., Gonzalez, C., Nodin, N., Peel, E., & Tyler, A. (2018). LGBT people and suicidality in youth: A qualitative study of perceptions of risk and protective circumstances. Social Science & Medicine, 212, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.06.040

LGBT People and Suicidality in Youth: A Qualitative Study of Perceptions of Risk and Protective Circumstances

- Participants associated their attempts to take their own lives with memories of their
experiences of first disclosure or ‘coming out’. 
- The conflicts expressed in these narratives illustrate sometimes constant personal struggles in the face of homo/bi/transphobic lived realities, generally experienced by participants in religious, school, or family settings and among their circle of peers.

Theme 1: Conflicts of being ‘out’: Stressors associated with LGBT suicide attempts in early life.

Theme 2: Concurrent mental health problems.

- The final theme extends the narrative of grief that appeared earlier and considers how lost relationships have impacted participants’ accounts of suicidality. 
- In many ways grief is a normative part of human relationships (Riggs & Peel, 2016) yet, some people may have few mental constructs to help them with the meaning-making process of incorporating loss into a new worldview. 
- This difficulty in adapting to a new reality can lead to erratic behaviours, which occur in interaction with an already undervalued sense of self.

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