Katherine Johnson's presentation at Pride After Prejudice- 31st October 2011 (prideafterprejudice.org)

1. Pride after Prejudice?
LGBT mental health and suicidal
‘risk’
Dr Katherine Johnson
University of Brighton
ESRC Festival of Social Science, Bristol, 31 October 2011

2. Contemporary concerns
• LGBT people are more likely to suffer
from psychological distress than
heterosexual people
• Latest UK study claims that
“LGB people are at higher risk of suicidal
behaviour, mental disorder, and substance
misuse and dependency than heterosexual
people”
• 2 fold increase in risk in previous year and 4
fold increase over life time for gay and bisexual
men.
• Not just about LGBT youth…
• Significant difference in psychological
well being for LGB people under 40

3. What causes it?
• After legacy of pathology growing
acceptance that this is a response
to social factors
• Linked to forms of discrimination
– For example, more likely to have
been verbally of physically abused
in last 5 years
• Minority stress
– Factors such as feelings of
rejection, isolation and shame
because of non-normative identity
development

4. Why is it a problem?
• Concern for psychological well-being but some
big gaps in terms of understanding the
relationship between mental health and suicide
– Conflates suicide with mental health (this is not
an explanation)
– Conflates accounts of suicidal thoughts and
feelings with actual suicides
– We do not know if LGBT are more likely to take
their lives than heterosexual people.
– All we know is that LGBT people are more likely
to report having thought about suicide or having
self-harmed.
• The recommendations that have been drawn
from these studies include
– A need for research to document whether LGBT
are more likely to take their lives
– Inclusion of LGB people on national suicide
prevention strategies as a ‘high risk group’

5. Is this an appropriate form of action?
• Be cautious….
• Individualizes response to social
environment
• Risks ‘repathologising’ all LGBT people by
creating a cultural narrative that positions
us all as ‘suicidal’
• Risks promoting this as an ‘acceptable’
form of action for LGBT youths and adults
• If we could document actual suicides
would we want to explain these in terms
of sexuality
– We wouldn’t do this in terms of
heterosexuality

6. ‘Affective Activism’ as form of action
• What is being communicated in accounts of LGBT
suicidal distress?
– suicide is not primarily about a psychological state (such
as mental illness), but is “a response to a psycho-social
dilemma concerning the desperate need for connection
with others in tension with the inevitable difficulties
inherent in that connection”
– “…shame-humiliation throughout life can be thought of
as an inability to effectively arouse the other person’s
positive reactions to one’s communication (and that) for
certain (“queer”) people, shame is the first, and remains
a permanent, structuring fact of identity”
• Perhaps not a desire to die, but a desire to coming out
of shame… a need for connection
• There are limits to public health policy interventions
that link LGBT identities to suicide
– Need for better social environments that allow for the
transference of feelings of shame or humiliation into
acceptable interest
– Need for strategies to enable a dialogue about the
shared emotional elements of our lives rather than
identity differences