Socioeconomic inequalities in the risk of suicide attempts among sexual minority adolescents: Findings from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study.
prospective_cohort · Level II
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36619211.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1016/j.lanepe.2022.100570 and PMC identifier 9813783.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Both sexual minority and socioeconomically deprived young people are at an increased risk of making a suicide attempt. Intersectionality theory predicts these risk factors will interact synergistically to create unique vulnerabilities. We investigated the risk of suicide attempts in sexual minority socioeconomically deprived young people in a contemporary national cohort. The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a birth cohort study in the UK following children born 2000-2002. Children in the MCS have been followed up over seven sweeps to date at ages 9 months, 3, 5, 7, 11, 14 and 17 years. The relative risk (RR) of self-reported suicide attempts at 17 years by sexual minority status and parental unemployment was estimated using multivariable log-binomial regression. Additive interaction, representing the synergistic effect, was estimated using the relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI). Between January, 2018 and March, 2019, 10,247 adolescents provided their sexuality and parents their employment status. 758 (7.4%) of 10,247 adolescents had made a suicide attempt. Relative to heterosexual young people living with no unemployed parents, the RR for sexual minorities living with no unemployed parents/carers was 2.93 (95% CI 2.26-3.79), one unemployed was 4.46 (95% CI 2.94-6.77), and two was 6.35 (95% CI 3.62-11.14). There was evidence of a positive additive interaction. The RERI for having one unemployed parent was 1.08 (95% CI -0.54 to 2.69) and two was 3.10 (95% CI -1.58 to 7.78). Sensitivity analyses using housing tenure and in a sample with no missing data generated comparable results. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that socioeconomically deprived sexual minority adolescents are uniquely vulnerable to making a suicide attempt. Health and educational practitioners need to be aware of the increased risk of suicide attempts in socioeconomically deprived sexual minority adolescents. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).