TW: Suicide, Veteran's Issues, LGBTQ+ Issues
I've said this a few times in the past, but today I decided to do the math. According to general estimates, for every successful suicide there are 25 attempts. This is just a general rule of thumb but I decided to run with it for the time being, and you'll see why soon.
Veterans have the highest suicide rate of any demographic in the USA that is based on a protected status, things like race, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, religious affiliation, political affiliation, and veteran status, of course. The suicide rate for veterans is a little complicated. There are those that count current service members, reservists, and national guard members among veteran suicides as they are all, at least psychologically, veterans. The VA, however, only counts discharged veterans, ignoring those who die by suicide while still in uniform, and those who's character of discharge denies them VA benefits. As such, I have data on *all* veterans from 2010, and data from discharged veterans from 2018. I'll show my work with both.
In 2010, the reported suicide rate for veterans was 35.9 per 100,000 (annually). If we multiply that by the 25 estimated attempts per death by suicide, that would lead to an estimated 8.975% of veterans attempt suicide each year.
In 2018, the reported suicide rate for discharged veterans was 27.5 per 100,000 (annually). Again, if we multiply that by the 25 estimated attempts per death by suicide, that would lead to an estimated 6.875% of discharged veterans attempt suicide each year.
I believe both of these numbers to still be fairly accurate, not down to the thousandth of a percent as shown, but close enough.
Now, why do these numbers specifically matter?
With the top number, Veterans still represent the highest rate of suicide attempts per year for adults. With the bottom number, where we ignore active duty troops, national guard members, and reservists, veterans have been eclipsed in recent years by another demographic.
The Trevor Project is a nonprofit that seeks to reduce the suicide rate of that other demographic, LGBTQ+ youth. Based on their 2021 National Survey of LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, they've broken down the attempt rates of LGBTQ youth into two groups, those aged 13-18 and those aged 19-24. For adults, Veterans still come out, with their rate at just under 9% of veterans attempting suicide per year, and 8.3% of LGBTQ youth ages 19-24 attempting suicide per year.
But the other rate is the one I want you to focus on, because it's very important due to recent laws being passed in multiple states, hundreds of them. According to the above mentioned survey, 19.0% of LGBTQ youth ages 13-18 reported attempting suicide in the last year. That's just short of one in five.
There are a huge number of factors that affect LGBTQ+ suicide rates, but among them are laws. Laws, it appears, affect the future outlook of LGBTQ+ individuals, and that affects suicide rates. Those laws that restrict them can increase that rate, those that accept them and support them can decrease that rate.
In Idaho, a bill that would affect that rate passed the state house easily. For the time being, it has been tabled in the state senate, but that does not mean it will not be enacted. It makes it a felony to give gender-affirming treatment, including hormone blockers and other hormone therapy proven to reduce suicide rates and other negative psychological conditions in trans youth, and in fact makes it a felony to assist in helping a trans youth to get that care outside of the state.
In Texas, multiple bills and executive actions have been pushed that legislate against LGBTQ+ Youth. The Texas Attorney General made an official opinion that the state's child protective services to treat gender-affirming medical care as child abuse. That means that those trans youth aged 13-18 that are already at such a high risk of attempting suicide can be taken away from their parents and put into a failing and dangerous foster care system, because their parents committed the crime of accepting and supporting them.
In Florida, teachers can now be penalized for having an in-class discussion that any parent considers inappropriate in regards to gender, sex, and sexuality. Due to the puritanical nature of the parents that have shown up at school board meetings, this likely means that any significant mention of any LGBTQ+ related issue is off the table. The proponents for the bill insist that it only counts towards k-3, but the law itself leaves open that interpretation all the way through k-12. Students who have homosexual parents who love them will be isolated because there can be no mention of that kind of relationship. Students who find themselves to be of a non-standard sexuality or gender will be isolated. This law was written specifically to have a chilling effect on teachers who would otherwise educate students on the simple fact that it is not inherently evil to love someone who is the same gender as you, or to not feel comfortable in the set of gender norms assigned to you by the culture around you.
You can get mad at me all you want for "mischaracterizing" these bills and actions, but the simple fact of the matter is that they are, directly, anti-LGBTQ and therefore increase the risk of suicide for these CHILDREN. The effects will be seen, and children, innocent of any crime other than not being standard issue hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine people, will die. Not enough to move the needle for people who support these bills, but one more than otherwise would happen is too many.
The difference between these two demographics I have pointed out so often is this: we, as veterans, signed up to give our lives in service. Sometimes that comes in the form of a combat wound, sometimes it comes in the form of a psychological condition that eventually takes us from this life through sheer attrition. That is plenty of a tragedy for me, but at least we signed up for it.
They didn't. LGBTQ+ children did not sign up to pay the ultimate price for the sociopolitical ideologies of a bunch of angry, scared, ignorant adults that want to legislate their very identities out of existence to protect those same adults' outdated worldview that is not based in fact. And thanks to the fact that so many of those adults have decided to wage this war on children on our own soil through attrition and destruction of their minds, neither I nor any of my fellow veterans can do as we signed up to, and take the blows for them.
I can accept the slow pace forward in reducing veteran suicides, but what I cannot condone or accept is the effective killing of children through legislation and executive action too cowardly to even do it by the politicians' own hands, but to punish and restrict and choke out all hope for these kids until the hands of those children do the killing for them.
If you live in the USA, take the time to check and see if your state is part of the problem. If it is, or if it is trying to be (meaning if your legislators have proposed laws that would make this worse), take the time to contact your legislators, your governor, your federal congressmen, and speak out against them. Tell them that you will not give them your vote if they support laws that will allow suicide to kill children at a higher rate that veterans. And then tell your friends, your loved ones, to do the same.
You may feel free to copy and paste this to share it as you see fit, and if you need to attribute it simply say that a disabled veteran who has struggled with suicide for many years wrote it.
Thank you for reading this far. God bless, if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise nice day.
Sources:
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/estimate-of-how-often-lgbtq-youth-attempt-suicide-in-the-u-s/
https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/docs/data-sheets/2020/2020-National-Veteran-Suicide-Prevention-Annual-Report-11-2020-508.pdf
https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201400031
https://wmich.edu/suicideprevention/basics/facts#:~:text=It%20is%20generally%20estimated%20that,actually%20taking%20their%20own%20lives.
https://www.hrc.org/news/idaho-house-passes-discriminatory-bill-to-criminalize-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-youth
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/us/texas-attorney-general-gender-affirmation-child-abuse/index.html
https://www.hrc.org/news/florida-senate-passes-dont-say-gay-or-trans-bill-legislation-heads-to-desantis-desk-for-signature-or-veto
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