Fighting suicide among LGBTQ youth
An international group of scholars, researchers, health care professionals and public policy experts convened at Concordia last week for the second edition of the LGBTQ Youth Suicide Prevention Summit.
The May 29-30 conference sought to examine and address the disproportionately high rate of suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.
It found a fitting forum at Concordia. Alan Shepard, the university’s president, sees diversity as an institutional priority.
“Concordia has always championed the rights of minorities,” Shepard said to the assembled delegates. “And our history of egalitarianism continues today.”
Shepard cited a range of research and support initiatives.
To name two: The Simone de Beauvoir Institute, a renowned centre of study on feminism and social justice, marked its 35th anniversary last year; it was granted official intervenor status when the Supreme Court struck down Canada’s prostitution laws in December.
A month before that historic decision, Concordia inaugurated its Sexual Assault Resource Centre (SARC), a confidential source of information and expert referral services that encourages collaboration with community groups like the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy.
A crucial conversation
Egale Canada Human Rights Trust (ECHRT) co-hosted the 2014 LGBTQ Youth Suicide Prevention Summit with Concordia.
Its statistics show that 33 per cent of Canadian lesbian, gay and bisexual youth have attempted suicide, compared with seven per cent of youth in general. Forty-seven per cent of trans youth have thought about suicide in the past year.
“There are people in North America and around the world doing research on this issue, and who want to have this conversation,” said Helen Kennedy, the ECHRT’s executive director. “With this event, we've been able to get these individuals together to talk about how we can address the key factors.”’
The first edition of LGBTQ Youth Suicide Prevention Summit was held at Toronto’s Ryerson University. As provost at that time, Shepard played a key role in organizing it.
“The 2012 summit was the first of its kind in Canada and, in many respects, in North America,” Shepard said. “We got a lay of the land — what we have and what we don’t even know — so that we can move forward in a united, coordinated way across Canada,”
At the 2012 summit, participants offered 20 recommendations on how to lower suicide rates among a high-risk demographic. At this year’s event, they sought to turn those ideas into actions by developing implementation plans for four areas: schools, education, and training; public awareness; community involvement and accountability; research and evaluation; and resource development.
“We’re going through all of the outcomes now, and soon we'll have concrete ideas coming from those action plans,” Kennedy said. “The next step will be to create a timeline and assign priorities.”
She was pleased that Concordia held the summit. “It gives us an opportunity to bring in the Quebec voice, which is hugely important.”
Thanks to a 2008 governmental resolution, Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada to have established an office to fight homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. Kennedy notes that “it gives that little bit of an extra political impetus.”
But LBGTQ teens in Quebec, and elsewhere, remain at risk — and that’s something the ECHRT and Concordia will continue to combat.
“The feedback from the summit was very positive,” Kennedy said. “We’re excited to move forward.”