PS03 - State-of-the-science Sexual and Gender Minority Suicide Research: Empirical Evidence from Europe and North America

Efforts to Bolster Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Data Collection in Mortality Surveillance in the United States
August, 28 | 17:00 - 18:30

Introduction: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people are more likely to attempt suicide than non-LGBT people. Previous suicide attempt strongly predicts suicide death, but because sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) are not documented at the time of death, it is unclear if LGBT people have greater risk of suicide death than their non-LGBT peers. Aim: This presentation synthesizes results from three related studies: (1) a systematic review of LGBT mortality studies, (2) an evaluation of training medicolegal death investigators (MDIs) to collect SOGI, and (3) a qualitative study of SOGI inclusion in MDI case management software. Methods: For study 1 (systematic review), three independent coders examined 6,255 abstracts, full-text reviewed 107 articles, and determined that 43 met inclusion criteria. For study 2, quantitative and qualitative analysis were used to assess death investigators’ (n=73) experiences with and opinions about gathering SOGI data. For study 3, representatives from MDI software companies identified in a US Department of Justice Report (n=9) were interviewed about their software’s inclusion of SOGI data fields. Results: In study 1 (the systematic review), 21/43 studies compared suicide mortality estimates between LGBT and non-LGBT decedents, and 90% of those studies found increased prevalence or risk for suicide death for LGBT people. In study 2, of the 73 MDIs trained in SOGI collection, 60.8% reported having a case in which they suspected the decedent was LGB, but less than half (47.8%) reported directly asking informants about the decedent’s sexual orientation, and 57.3% reported a case in which they thought the decedent was transgender, but only 44.9% asked informants directly about the decedent’s gender identity. Pre-training, 42% indicated likelihood of identifying a decedent’s sexual orientation and 53.6% indicated likelihood of identifying a decedent’s gender identity, which increased to 88.4% and 87.0% post-training, respectively. Study 3 found that only 2 of 9 MDI software systems included SOGI but most indicated that custom fields could be developed by coroners/medical examiners if they wanted to. However, no interviewee provided an example for how SOGI had been added in such a way. Conclusion: Suicide deaths from aggregated research indicate a concordance of greater burden by SOGI. Integrating SOGI data into death investigations and mortality surveillance systems is challenging but possible.

Speakers