Study shows LGBT BYU students at higher risk for depression, suicide
JANUARY 20, 2017 by JESSICA OLSEN
Jacob Dunford, who works for Provo’s first LGBT resource center Encircle, looks out the
Encircle home window at the Provo City Center Temple. (Jessica Olsen)
BYU senior Brenna McGrath was in the process of slowly overdosing herself with
medication when her class held a panel for BYU’s unofficial LGBT club, Understanding
Same-Gender Attraction.
“USGA saved my life,” said McGrath,
who identifies as bisexual. “It’s a pretty
common story for us in the club.”
However, another common story for
LGBT individuals and their friends is
the alternate ending to McGrath’s story:
crippling depression and suicide.
“I have gone to the hospital in the past
year two different times to visit LGBT
BYU students who had attempted
suicide. I hope that never happens
again,” said BYU civil engineering
major Dillon Harker, who identifies as
gay. “I don’t want to have to visit
another friend in the hospital.”
The rate of suicide attempts is four
times greater for LGBT youth than straight youth, according to the Trevor Project, a
leading national organization providing crisis prevention to LGBT youth.
Just as shocking is Utah’s own suicide rate: 23.9 suicides per 100,000 population for
people ages 10 and up in 2013. To put that into perspective, the U.S. suicide rate for
people ages 10 and up was 14.9 per 100,000 population during that same period.
The suicide rate in Utah has been historically higher than that of the U.S., according to
data from the Public Health Indicator Based Information System. (Jessica Olsen)
Utah’s youth suicide rate has nearly tripled since 2007 and is now the leading cause of
death among 10 to 17-year-olds. A host of news articles points to the treatment of LGBT
youth and young adults as the cause.
Though BYU has no formal support groups for LGBT students, it does offer access to oncampus counseling and an unofficial LGBT group called Understanding Same-Gender
Attraction, which holds its meetings off campus.
However, some LGBT students like Harker feel BYU needs to do more to address the
needs of LGBT people. Missing on the wall outside the counseling center, he said, are the
brochures and pamphlets about being LGBT.
USGA conducted its own survey in winter 2015. They surveyed 92 primarily LGBT
BYU students and found 52 percent “at some point in life considered self-harm.” Fiftytwo percent also indicated in the survey they felt they didn’t have a go-to friend.
The second statistic should cause worry, according to BYU psychology professor Dee
Higley. Higley studies depression from a biological standpoint, with the emphasis of his
study being the impaired serotonin system that people with a tendency toward depression
have.
“If you live in an environment where your community is very supportive, you have less
stress and less stress hormones,” Higley said. “They (community members) are giving
you the capacity to cope with things that you wouldn’t normally cope with.”
Higley said studies show psychosomatic illnesses are reduced by having a supportive
partner or community. This same logic explains why studies show actively religious
people are less prone to psychosomatic distress than others.
McGrath herself said the sense of community she found at USGA saved her life.
However, she said the lack of community she and others have felt in the LDS Church
have at times induced anxiety and panic attacks.
“Church has been a toxic environment for me,” McGrath said. “I do get panic attacks. I
do feel isolated.”
For McGrath, church culture produces the opposite effect of providing support. While
supportive spouses are also seen to decrease mental distress, being gay and Mormon
means going through life without a marital partner in many cases.
“It was a weight on me, this reality that I was going to be alone forever,” said BYU
senior Austin Daw, who identifies as gay. “I was always going to be that uncle who was
alone at family parties.”
USGA members wear temporary tattoos at the Provo Pride Parade in September 2016.
(KC Clark)
For Harker, the critical and negative remarks can be just as isolating. Daw likewise
remembers one occasion when a professor told the class she didn’t get married until she
was 45, so she knew what it was like to be a single older Mormon, like most gay
Mormons have to be. Daw said he understood the point she was trying to make, but he
still felt like it diminished his struggle.
“It’s like someone saying, ‘I understand depression because I get sad sometimes,’” Daw
said. “Different things.”
Daw said it would help him if people were more conscious of how their words affected
other people. He also wants them to recognize there are more gay people at BYU than
most realize.
“It was always interesting when I was in class and someone said, ‘Oh, the gay people,’
and I’m thinking, ‘OK, I am in this class.’ It’s like a constant ‘othering’ effect, making
gay people or LGBT people to be not Mormon and not at BYU,” Daw said. “That’s not
true.”
Harker also addressed this “othering” effect.
“We are not the other,” Harker said. “We are an important part of BYU.”
When Debra Coe became a member of the Utah Commission on LGBT Suicide
Awareness and Prevention, she said she didn’t have a direct connection to anyone LGBT
— at least, she didn’t think she did. After seeing her love and compassion toward the
LGBT community, her son, a college student, came out to her as gay.
“And then we came to find out later that he really struggled with (depression),” Coe said.
Coe said she learned even well-intentioned conversations about gay people can affect
LGBT individuals. The silence and lack of defense can be just as “deafening,” Coe said.
“As we’re making comments about how terrible gay people are, they are internalizing
this as, ‘That’s me,’ and feeling like there’s nothing they can do about it,” Coe said.
Higley said this feeling of helplessness can be detrimental.
“(Helplessness) is what happens when you hear every day that you don’t fit, that if you
just read your scriptures more, if you prayed more, you’d overcome your same-sex
attraction,” Higley said. “You begin to believe ‘there must be something wrong with
me.’”
Liza Holdaway, who identifies as bisexual, said she has seen this thinking in her own life
and in the lives of her friends. Because some LGBT people believe when they die they
will be straight or “normal,” Holdaway said her friends will sometimes reason, “Why
don’t I just die right now? Why don’t I just kill myself right now?”
Holdaway dismisses this detrimental thinking and instead tries to think about the good
things she is doing and the difference she is making. She said it took years for her to
come to this point, and that she and many other LGBT BYU students are still grappling
with their identity and place in society.
Stephanie Larsen said it’s important to have a safe environment for LGBT people and
their family members to work through the struggles that come with being part of this
community. She and others in the local community have come together to open Provo’s
first LGBT resource center, called Encircle.
USGA and other organizations have tried to take the same approach, creating a safe and
loving environment for individuals to work through what it means to be part of the LGBT
community or to have an LGBT child.
“We want Encircle to be a very safe space for families, where they can keep their
religious values and work through it,” Larsen said.
UVU student and Encircle marketer Jacob Dunford, sitting beside Larsen, chimed in.
“No prescriptive outcomes,” Dunford said. “Just love.”