A small US and Canadian study of 31 young LGBTQ+ adults from Tennessee, USA, with an average age of 21 found being exposed to negative news or media about the LGBTQ+ community resulted in an increase in thoughts about suicide and self-harm. The participants reported on recent exposure to negative news or media, including no exposure, exposure to general negative news, and exposure to negative news about the LGBTQ+ community. They also reported on thoughts of suicide and self-harm, completing three assessments per day for 28 consecutive days, resulting in a total of 2,189 assessments. The team found exposure to negative news or media about the LGBTQ+ community, but not generally negative news or media, was linked with more thoughts about suicide or self-harm in the hours following exposure.
Condition_0ne on
Not a great or conclusive study. The “ecological momentary assessment protocol” – aside from being of questionable validity and reliability as a measure – may very well have had a priming effect in asking about suicidal/self-harm ideation each day (in a sample of people already experiencing depression and past year suicidal ideation!), and the lower bound of 95% confidence intervals on the effect sizes barely got above zero (which is unsurprising given the sample is tiny).
nevara19 on
Never seen a single negative word about LGBT in the media…
impermanentvoid on
Why can’t people just love who they love?
hefoxed on
While not suicidal, I saw how my mental health worsened when paying more attention to the news cycle, but it’s hard to distinguish between the effects media vs social media vs neutral coverage of anti-trans laws comments, that’s so hard to control for
ttkciar on
Gee, you think?
It’s as if the “silence = death” slogan were about more than just the AIDS epidemic.
6 Comments
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2823467
From the linked article:
A small US and Canadian study of 31 young LGBTQ+ adults from Tennessee, USA, with an average age of 21 found being exposed to negative news or media about the LGBTQ+ community resulted in an increase in thoughts about suicide and self-harm. The participants reported on recent exposure to negative news or media, including no exposure, exposure to general negative news, and exposure to negative news about the LGBTQ+ community. They also reported on thoughts of suicide and self-harm, completing three assessments per day for 28 consecutive days, resulting in a total of 2,189 assessments. The team found exposure to negative news or media about the LGBTQ+ community, but not generally negative news or media, was linked with more thoughts about suicide or self-harm in the hours following exposure.
Not a great or conclusive study. The “ecological momentary assessment protocol” – aside from being of questionable validity and reliability as a measure – may very well have had a priming effect in asking about suicidal/self-harm ideation each day (in a sample of people already experiencing depression and past year suicidal ideation!), and the lower bound of 95% confidence intervals on the effect sizes barely got above zero (which is unsurprising given the sample is tiny).
Never seen a single negative word about LGBT in the media…
Why can’t people just love who they love?
While not suicidal, I saw how my mental health worsened when paying more attention to the news cycle, but it’s hard to distinguish between the effects media vs social media vs neutral coverage of anti-trans laws comments, that’s so hard to control for
Gee, you think?
It’s as if the “silence = death” slogan were about more than just the AIDS epidemic.