Suicide-related events much higher among gays, lesbians, bisexuals

Gays, lesbians, and bisexual individuals are at much greater risk of suicide-related behaviour events compared with heterosexuals, a population-based study has found.

The authors merged data from a population-based survey (n=123,995) to health administrative data (2002‒2019) and examined the differences in time to suicide-related behaviour events across sexual orientations using Cox proportional hazards regression.

The crude incidence rates of suicide-related behaviour events per 100,000 person-years were 224.7 for heterosexuals. On the other hand, the corresponding rates for gays/lesbians and bisexuals were 664.7 and 5,911.9.

In fully adjusted (gender-combined) models, bisexuals had 2.98 times (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 2.08‒4.27) greater odds of having an event and gays/lesbians had 2.10 times (95 percent CI, 1.18‒3.71) higher likelihood than heterosexuals.

“Increased education among psychiatric professionals is needed to improve awareness of and sensitivity to the elevated risk of suicide-related behaviour among sexual minority individuals, and further research on interventions is needed to reduce such behaviours,” the authors said.

Additionally, psychiatrist and healthcare professionals should regularly screen bisexual women for psychiatric mental health problems and pay more attention to individuals suffering from poor social support, according to the authors.

“In addition, the collection of sexual orientation data has a high level of acceptability, and given the higher risk of suicide-related behaviour among sexual minorities, it is important to consider sexual orientation as a part of routinely collected data to improve patient care,” they added.