By Rex Wockner
A University of British Columbia survey of 345 gay men age 18 to 30 has found they are 10 times more likely to have considered suicide than their heterosexual peers, and are more likely to have dropped out of school and to have been raped.
The research was conducted by Michael Botnick and presented at Canada's annual HIV/AIDS research conference.
Forty-three percent of the men surveyed had considered killing themselves and 20 percent had actually tried to do so. Only 3.2 percent of straight North American male youth attempt suicide.
Among those who had tried to kill themselves, more than half had sex forced on them before age 18 and only about half had finished high school.
Botnick is a former board member of the Vancouver Pride Society.
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