52% of homosexual youth report self-harming: UK study
LONDON, January 15, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A survey by a UK pro-homosexual organization found that 52 percent of the self-professed homosexual youth that took part in the study reported self-harming, while numbers approaching half reported other forms of serious mental health problems.
Led by the homosexual advocacy group Metro and funded by the Big Lottery Research Fund, the "Youth Chances" survey is described by organizers as "England’s largest social study into the lives of young LGBT people." Seven thousand 16-25 year-olds, most of whom identified as homosexual, bisexual or transgender, took part in the study. It also surveyed a small subgroup of heterosexuals (11% of the total).
The survey found that 52 percent of those questioned reported self-harming. This compares to 35% of the subgroup of heterosexual respondents to the survey. The most recent NHS data puts that number even lower, at 12% overall for this age group.
Forty-two percent of homosexual youth said they sought medical help for anxiety or depression, compared to 29% of "heterosexual non-transsexual" respondents to the survey.
The report also found that 44 percent of the young LGBT respondents reported having ever thought about suicide. This compares to 26% of "heterosexual non-transsexual" respondents to the survey, and a rate of 21% overall for this age group documented in the research from the NHS.
The study concludes that inadequate social and mental health services, and a lack of acceptance and bullying, which has created "a climate of fear and hostility," are to blame for these problems in the UK's homosexual youth.
“We should all be deeply concerned about the crisis in LGBTQ young people’s mental health and wellbeing that Youth Chances has uncovered," said Metro's acting CEO Dr Greg Ussher, adding "we can and must act on to ensure that LGBTQ young people are afforded the same life chances as their peers."
However, a leading researcher on homosexuality questioned those conclusions, saying the causes for higher mental health issues in homosexual youth may have a more fundamental cause.
“I've heard personal stories from many men and women who came out of homosexuality, and they attested to the pain they lived with in the past, the unhealthy practices they engaged in, and the life and liberation they experienced when they stopped identifying as gay and engaging in same-sex relationships,” Dr. Michael L. Brown, author of “A Queer Thing Happened to America,” told LifeSiteNews.
“I'm quite sure that God didn't intend males to be with males or females with females, and there are always consequences to deviating from God's order – not because He is cruel but because His ways are best,” Dr. Brown said.
“My heart breaks for these kids and their struggles. And to whatever extent bullying or mistreatment plays into their pain, that’s a shame and it’s something we need to address,” he said, but pointed out that “even in the most committed, happy, same-sex relationships, the primary sexual acts performed have greater health risks, while the overall stability and longevity of same-sex relationships, on average, is far less than that of heterosexual relationships.”
Numerous studies have pointed to the harmful effects of homosexuality.
After one study was released that found that teens who self-identify as homosexual are five times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to attempt suicide, Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council commented that the takeaway finding is not that gay teens are marginally less likely to commit suicide in a “supportive” environment, but that overall gay teens are so many times more likely to commit suicide than their non-gay peers – “a difference that far overwhelms any difference caused by the ‘social environment.’”
Dr. Neil Whitehead, a scientific research consultant from New Zealand and author of the book “My Genes Made Me Do It - a scientific look at sexual orientation” pointed out in a paper available on the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) website that, the authors of one study done in The Netherlands, “were surprised to find so much mental illness in homosexual people in a country where tolerance of homosexuality is greater than in almost all other countries.”
Dr. Whitehead pointed out that, “In his cross-cultural comparison of mental health in the Netherlands, Denmark and the U.S., Ross (1988) could find no significant differences between countries - i.e. the greater social hostility in the United States did not result in a higher level of psychiatric problems.”
“Unfortunately, to say these things is to be branded homophobic," Dr. Brown told LifeSiteNews.com, "whereas it is actually love for gays and lesbians that motivates this honesty and compassion, just as it is love that motivates a person to tell a loved one that their obesity or smoking is unhealthy.”
