Peddling a dodgy survey result to boost a dodgy argument: "Five of Australia's most respected mental health groups have joined forces ... in favour of same-sex marriage, claiming the reform could prevent up to 3000 high school suicide attempts every year."
Marriage is not anti-suicide program, and the claim is based on a very suspect American survey.
Here how Fairfax and the activists present the findings:
This claim draws on peer-reviewed research by some of America's top adolescent mental health experts, published in JAMA Paediatrics, that showed a strong correlation between same-sex marriage policies and high school suicide. The introduction of state same-sex marriage was associated with a 7 per cent relative reduction in suicide attempts.
The groups have combined these findings with statistics from the Australian government's own Report on the Second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing to arrive at the number of 3000. It found one in 40 of all 12 to 17-year-olds reported having attempted suicide in the previous 12 months - about 41,000 people.
But here is the crucial caveat from that American survey itself which they fail to add - a caveat which suggests their claims are completely unreliable and certainly exaggerated (my bolding):
Our study has some limitations. The main outcome is based on self-report, which is the standard approach to assessing suicide attempts, given that a minority of individuals who attempt suicide present to hospitals and that suicides are rare and often underreported.
The analyses on the association between implementation of same-sex marriage policies and adolescent suicide attempts among those identifying as sexual minorities should be interpreted with caution given the limited data availability on sexual orientation (eTables 1 and 2 in the Supplement) and the potential for same-sex marriage to affect sexual minority identity.
We also could not control for unmeasured individual-level characteristics, including socioeconomic status, or for unmeasured state characteristics that may change over time, such as religious affiliation or acceptance of sexual minorities.
Finally, our analysis does not allow us to understand the mechanisms through which implementation of same-sex marriage policies reduced adolescent suicide attempts. There is a need for further research to understand the association between sexual minority rights, stigma, and sexual minority health.
Four big caveats, in fact, and that's from the survey itself.
There is a fifth and more important one, however. The results are from an American survey.
Those results are then extrapolated to Australia, where, I suspect, acceptance of gays is actually greater. It is that acceptance, rather than the legalisation of gay marriage, that surely helps the mental health of young gays.
In short, the claim today - that same-sex marriage "could prevent up to 3000 high school suicide attempts every year" - is emotional blackmail using high suspect evidence and exaggeration. Shame on the five mental health bodies stooping to these tactics - ReachOut, Headspace, Orygen, the Black Dog Institute and Sydney University's Brain and Mind Centre.
UPDATE
Even stranger. The claim the legalising gay marriage will cause a 7 per cent drop in suicide attempts - amounting to 3000 in a year - suggests high school students make 43,000 suicide attempts a year.
Is this remotely credible?
Let's go back to the original American survey:
Evidence from nationally representative 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) data indicates that more than 29% of gay, lesbian, and bisexual high school students reported attempting suicide within the past 12 months, relative to 6% of heterosexual students.
And it said same-sex marriage caused a 7 per cent drop in "all" suicide attempts, rather than only by gay, lesbian and bisexual students.
You'd assume, of course, that it would overwhelmingly reduce suicide attempts by gay, lesbian and bisexual students, which translates to a reduction of more than 23 per cent in that cohort alone.
Now transpose these results to Australia, as the five mental health bodies have done.
First, they claim legalising same sex marriage would cause a drop in suicide attempts by all high school students of 7 per cent - or 3000 a year.
This assumes there are nearly 43,000 suicide attempts by high school students every year, or 117 a day.
The Way I See It.....that seems unbelievably high, since ABS records show we lost just over one child aged 19 or younger to suicide every second day. That's terrible, but suggests either that the claim of 117 suicide attempts a day is grossly exaggerated or that most attempts are actually just gestures and appeals for help or attention.
Let's also assume that the US study's breakdown of suicide-attempt cohorts applies here, too, and that 29 per cent of the suicide attempts here were by gay, lesbian, and bisexual high school students.
That then suggests gay, lesbian, and bisexual high school students in Australia make 40 suicide attempts every single day.
Can that be true? Not really.....it's ludicrous !
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