SAFE PLACE TO LEARN
27
LGBT youth, risk, and the school environment
Research indicates that LGBT adolescents are at higher risk
than their heterosexual peers for some of the most
compromising challenges that adolescents face today:
substance use and abuse
1
, depression and anxiety
2
, violence
and victimization
3
, and suicide
4
. Several of those problems
pertain directly to education and schooling, such as poor
academic performance, negative school attitudes
5
,or
victimization at school.
6
In addition, recent research has
begun to link the negative mental health and risk behaviors
of LGBT youth to challenges that they face in school,
including harassment and discrimination. These challenges
impede not only the students’ academic performance, but
also their general emotional and social development.
The school is one of the most important contexts for child
and adolescent development. Next to the family (and faith
for some youth), education plays a critical role in the lives of
children and adolescents. The school environment is
important not only in the development of academic and
occupational skills, but also the personal and social skills that
shape the first 20 years of life.
However, bullying and harassment on the basis of actual or
perceived sexual orientation and gender non-conformity
are pervasive in contemporary schools. Survey laws that are
restrictive or too broadly interpreted have hampered
school-based research into harassment on the basis of
actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity
and non-conformity. Research has also been limited by the
difficulty of introducing specific questions related to the
subject into the standard, population-based surveys that are
widely used to measure student health, such as the Center
for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey and its
state and local versions.
Despite these limitations, several studies have examined
harassment in school based on actual or perceived sexual
orientation. This research tells a story consistent with our
findings: harassment based on actual or perceived sexual
orientation is pervasive and has serious consequences.
Several population-based studies of adolescent health risk
that included questions about sexual orientation, same-sex
behavior, or harassment based on actual or perceived sexual
orientation were collected in a 1999 report by the Safe
Schools Coalition of Washington. The report included local
and state versions of the federal Youth Risk Behavior Survey
in Vermont, Seattle, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin; the
Adolescent Health Survey conducted by the University of
Minnesota; the Voice of Connecticut Youth survey; and the
National American Indian Adolescent Health Survey.
Students in these studies who were harassed based on sexual
orientation were 4 times more likely to have been threatened
or injured with a weapon in the last 12 months, 2-3 times as
likely to have missed a day of school out of fear for their
safety, 2 times as likely to have used inhalants, and 1.5 times
as likely to have seriously considered suicide
7
. Almost no
research has examined the problem of harassment based on
gender identity or non-conformity.
Every two years, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education
Network (GLSEN) conducts the National School Climate
Survey, which examines LGBT students’ experiences of
harassment using a nationwide convenience sample built
through community outreach. In 2003, 84 percent of the
LGBT students who responded reported being harassed
based on sexual orientation during the last school year.These
harassed students had lower grades and were less likely to
intend to go to college than students who were not harassed.
8
In late 2002, the National Mental Health Association
conducted a random telephone survey inquiring into the
issue of harassment based on actual or perceived sexual
orientation. NMHA found that among its 760 adolescent
respondents, 78 percent reported that students in their
school who are gay or thought to be gay are teased or bullied.
93 percent reported that they hear words like “fag,” “homo,”
“dyke,” “queer,” or “gay” at school or in their neighborhood;
51 percent reported hearing such language every day.
9
While many efforts have been made to document the stories
of students harassed based on actual or perceived sexual
orientation, the most sustained and systematic efforts to
gather qualitative data may be a five-year effort by the Safe
Schools Coalition of Washington, “They Don’t Even Know
Appendix 2: Other research on harassment based on actual
or perceived sexual orientation and gender non-conformity
1
Garofalo R., Wolf R.C., Kessel S., Palfrey J., DuRant R.H,The association between health
risk behaviors and sexual orientation among a school-based sample of adolescents.
Pediatrics. 1998; 101:895-902; and
Russell S.T., Joyner K. 2001.Adolescent Sexual Orientation and Suicide Risk:Evidence
from a National Study. American Journal of Public Health.
2
Russell and Joyner, 2001.
3
Garofalo, Wolf, Kessel, Palfrey and DuRant, 1998;
DuRant R.H., Krowchuck D.P., Sinal S.H.Victimization, use of violence, and drug use at
school among male adolescents who engage in same-sex sexual behavior. Journal of
Pediatrics, 1998:138;113-118; and
Russell S.T., Franz B.T.,Driscoll A.K.2001.Adolescent Sexual Orientation and Violence:
Understanding Victimization and Violence Perpetration.The American Journal of Public Health.
4
Russell and Joyner, 2001;
Hammelman,T.L. 1993. Gay and Lesbian Youth: Contributing Factors to Serious Attempts or
Considerations of Suicide. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy. 2:77-89;
Rotheram-Borus, M.J., Hunter J., Rosario M. 1994. Suicidal Behavior and Gay-Related
Stress among Gay and Bisexual Male Adolescents. Unpublished manuscript, Columbia
University; and
Russell, S.T. (2003). Sexual minority youth and suicide risk. American Behavioral Scientist.
46, 1241-1257.
5
Russell S.T., Seif H., Truong N.L. 2001. School Outcomes of Sexual Minority Youth in the
United States: Evidence from a National Study. Journal of Adolescence.
6
Garofalo, Wolf, Kessel, Palfrey and Durant, 1998;
Human Rights Watch. 2001. Hatred in the hallways: Violence and discrimination against
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students in U.S. schools. New York: Human Rights
Watch. www.hrw.org
7
Reis and Saewyc, “83,000 youth: Selected findings from eight population-based studies.”
Safe Schools Coalition of Washington, 1999.
8
GLSEN, “The 2001 National School Climate Survey,” 2003. www.glsen.org
9
International Communications Research, “What Does Gay Mean? Teen Survey,” NMHA,
2002. www.nmha.org
10
Reis. “They Don’t Even Know Me:A Report on the Five-Year Anti-Violence Research
Project of the Safe Schools Coalition of Washington,” Safe Schools Coalition of
Washington, 1999. www.safeschoolscoalition.org