LGBT youth who are severely bullied face higher rates of both depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than those who aren’t, but the PTSD in particular persists for longer once the bullying subsides, according to a new study from Northwestern University.
The four-year study conducted in Chicago found that about a third of LGBT youth experienced discrimination, harassment and assault but the rates are beginning to decrease, said Brian Mustanski, an associate professor and director of the 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.
Mustanski explained to Zack Ford that youth who experienced either increasing levels of bullying over the time period or consistently high-levels of bullying were at greater risk for long-lasting mental health problems.
“Across the board, anyone who was not in that sort of low/decreasing group [of bullying] had significantly high rates of PTSD — over nine times the rate of PTSD in the group with increasing discrimination, but five times for depression.”
“Similarly,” Mustanski continued, “We saw that unlike depression, the group that experienced high levels of victimization in high school that declines over time still were showing high levels of PTSD, but we didn’t see that with depression. There was more scarring in terms of PTSD than there is for depression. Those earlier high levels of victimization are having more impact on PTSD.”