It doesn't 'get better' for some bullied LGBT youths

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/nu-id020916.php

Public Release: 9-Feb-2016
It doesn't 'get better' for some bullied LGBT youths
Risk of lasting mental health problems for severely victimized LGBT youths
Northwestern University

First study to examine severity of bullying over time, its impact on mental health
Researchers struck by 'how severe' harassment, assaults are for some LGBT teens
If these 'criminal offenses' happened out of school, 'people would be calling the police'

Since 2010, more than 613,000 people have pledged to combat bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens as part of the "It Gets Better" campaign. And a new Northwestern Medicine study has found that most adolescents would agree that it does, in fact, get better. But not all.

Discrimination, harassment and assault of LGBT youths is still very much a problem for about a third of adolescents, the study found. What's more, it's often very severe, ongoing and leads to lasting mental health problems such as major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

"We tend to think that society is evolving but we can't just accept this narrative that 'it gets better' and think it gets better for everyone," said Brian Mustanski, an associate professor in medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the new Northwestern Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.

Mustanski was happy to see that the majority of the 248 youths in the study (84.6 percent) experienced decreasing levels of victimization over the four years. But 10.3 percent experienced significant increases in bullying, and 5.1 percent maintained high levels of victimization over the four years. Mustanski was struck by just how severe the treatment was.

"With bullying, I think people often assume 'that's just kids teasing kids,' and that's not true," Mustanski said. "If these incidents, which might include physical and sexual assaults, weren't happening in schools, people would be calling the police. These are criminal offenses."

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"You can't equate someone giving you a dirty look with someone physically assaulting you," Mustanski said. "Victimizations that are more severe are going to have bigger effects. We scored them in a way that represented that, and we saw they had a profound effect on mental health rates over time."

The LGBT youths who were at the highest risk for mental health problems were those who experienced moderate harassment (i.e. having something thrown at them) that increased over time or adolescents who continually experienced high levels of victimization (i.e. physical or sexual assault) over the course of the four years.

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