It Gets Better Videos for Suicide Prevention in LGBTIQ+ Adolescents

Background: The It Gets Better project aims to help prevent suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) adolescents. It features personal video narratives portraying how life gets better when struggling with adversities. Research on the contents of messages is scarce. Aims: We aimed to explore the content of videos in the Austrian It Gets Better project regarding the representation of various LGBTIQ+ groups and selected content characteristics. Method: A content analysis of all German-language videos was conducted ( N = 192). Messages related to coming out, stressors experienced, suicidal ideation/behavior, and on how things get better were coded. Results: Representation was strong for gay men ( n = 45; 41.7%). Coming out to others was mainly positively framed ( n = 31; 46.3%) and seen as a tool to make things better ( n = 27; 37.5%). Social support ( n = 42; 62.7%) and self-acceptance ( n = 37; 55.2%) were prevalent topics. Common stressors included a conservative setting ( n = 18, 26.9%), and fear of outing ( n = 17; 25.4%). Suicidality ( n = 9; 4.7%) and options to get professional help ( n = 7; 8.2%) were rarely addressed. Limitations: Only aspects explicitly brought up in the videos were codeable. Conclusion: Videos do not fully represent gender identities and sexual orientations. Messaging on suicidality and professional help require strengthening to tailor them better for suicide prevention.

The “Epidemic of Bullying and Gay Teen Suicide”: Tyler Clementi and It Gets Better

Chapter 3 examines the first gay death that incited national outrage after Matthew Shepard’s murder: Tyler Clementi’s suicide in 2010. Twelve years after Shepard’s murder, another white, Protestant, gay college student became a national name. The chapter explores why many elected officials and heterosexual citizens viewed Clementi’s suicide as an atrocity that the country needed to address. The chapter also investigates how several anti-gay Christian groups reframed their rhetoric about homosexuality as a direct response to Clementi’s suicide. The chapter’s other focus is the It Gets Better Project. It Gets Better became a cultural phenomenon soon after news broke of Clementi’s death. The chapter considers why It Gets Better achieved remarkable popularity, what messages the campaign has promoted as necessary for a “better” life, and how those largely Protestant messages are based on the assimilationist trends of white, middle-class, gender-typical, gay Americans.