Can Same-Sex Marriage Really Reduce Teen Suicide?

A study appearing in the “online first” section of JAMA Pediatrics began making the media rounds earlier this week. Its authors analyzed population-based data that were collected over sixteen years by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with a sample consisting of more than 750,000 American high-school students. The authors conclude that the arrival of state-level same-sex marriage policies was associated with a dip in the overall teen suicide rate of those states, especially among students identifying as sexual minorities.

If the authors are right, and these data really mean that 134,000 fewer adolescents are attempting suicide each year, as the authors extrapolate, that is indeed welcome news. However, I’m not yet convinced that that is the case.

The skeptic in me balks at the idea that a public policy shift on (adult) marriage access would have anything to do with how the average teenager grapples with feelings of depression and self-worth. Still, I’m willing to believe that it could have a positive impact on sexual minorities—at least for a short while—given the symbolic status of the 2015 Obergefell decision. Unlike attitude shifts in public opinion polls, such a legal victory is a seismic and tangible event—a mountaintop experience for their supporters. And yet for teenagers these remain largely symbolic victories, since we live in a country where marriage in general is retreating rapidly and where those who eventually marry do so at older ages than ever before.

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