LogFAQs > #907846901

It's not uncommon for people to commit suicide shortly after coming out if there's a severe negative reaction to it, as they've just made themselves very vulnerable and been burned for it; it's not exactly something you can take back once it's done, which means you just have to live with whatever it is people think. The odds skyrocket if it comes from relatives, though. It doesn't help that a lot of people (especially younger kids) are not aware that support systems exist for people in their situation; a teenager may be aware that some sort of LGBT group exists to help them if things are bad, but a kid in elementary school? Unlikely.

In a way, it's sort of living like with a disease in that if people stigmatize you for it, there's not really anything you can do about it. That's a rough thing to come to terms with, especially for a kid. If the school faculty was aware that the kid had come out, they should have monitored the situation more carefully to ensure that the child wasn't being treated badly during a vulnerable period. It's a terrible situation all-around, and this is probably something that schools need to find a way of addressing more consistently.

I've experienced both ends of that; in elementary school, the faculty did nothing for any sort of bullying as they saw it as a legal liability+I lived in a small town where parents were friends with the teachers (or the teachers were the parents in some instances) so kids got away with a lot. When I moved to a different town, I noticed that the faculty in the other schools I went to were very attentive to kids who they knew were going through rough times (sometimes they were almost intrusively attentive, lol), and it really does make a difference; a lot of people from my elementary school are dead or drug addicted now, while the people who I graduated high school with, including some that were very troubled, seem to be doing pretty well.
---

Hi