Warning: some of these numbers, stories, ect, are not easy to handle. Discretion advised!
Let's face it, everyone gets bullied at least once in our lives. A few months ago we had the 6 suicides of young teens/pre-teens they were mostly within the GLBT community, and had been bullied. One year ago today my dear friend took her own life. She took some pills to end her life. She was 26 years old. She was the strongest people I have come to know. She was making the transition from female to male. Her family did not accept this decision, and she did get bullied a lot for how she looked or her decision to go though this change. On one website, it reports that "Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers, according to the Massachusetts 2006 Youth Risk Survey." That same website also goes on to say, "A 2009 study, "Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes" led by Dr. Caitlin Ryan and conducted as part of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, shows that adolescence who were rejected by their families for being LGBT were 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide. And for every completed suicide by a young person, it is estimated that 100 to 200 attempts are made (2003 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey)."
(The above information was taken from http://gaylife.about.com/od/gayteens/a/gaysuicide.htm)
But it doesn't stop there. According to one other website:
"LGBT teens are between 30 and 40 percent more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, 365 Gay reports. Despite increased acceptance of LGBT people in today's pop culture, LGBT teens still suffer from bullying and abuse from peers, especially in middle school. With technology, the abuse goes beyond the classroom and into the realm of text messaging and social-networking sites, where comments are visible and can be brutal. So when an LGBT teen feels suicide is their only option, it can almost be said that they were bullied to death.
Currently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concludes the annual rate of suicide in the country at between 35,000 and 40,000 per year--and of those deaths, almost 20 percent are teens between the ages of 12 and 18. This means suicide is the second-leading cause of death among teens in the U.S. However, the American Association of Suicidology feels the numbers may be higher since a large majority of teen suicides are disguised as accidents or drug overdoses when in fact they were intentional."
(The above information was taken from http://www.diversityinc.com/article/4289/LGBTTeen-Suicide-Rate-Rises/)
All these suicides are tragic, but the one that sticks out most it my mind was the young man who killed himself at Rutgers. He was outted online by his roommate. His roommate posted the footage of this young man online after his (the young man who took his own life) life. This young man, in the start of school, and after being outted, he then jumped off the George Washington Bridge. More on this story can be found at: http://blogs.abcnews.com/nightlinedailyline/2011/03/are-coed-dorm-rooms-the-right-answer-in-wake-of-rutgers-suicide.html
Two other website you can also visit for a grasp on the numbers, figures, and even stories of those who have passed away or have attempted to take their own life due to bullying because of their sexual orientation.
Those links are:
http://www.suicide.org/gay-and-lesbian-suicide.html
http://www.soulforce.org/article/653
Maybe there will be a world one day where no one cares about race, gender, sexual orientation/sexual preference, disabilities, creed, ect. If we all just start being kinder more accepting, and more respectful, maybe there will be a world of less suicides and/or attempted suicides.