Widener Professor Appointed to National Task Force to Counter LGBT Teen Suicide

PHILADELPHIA – Philip A. Rutter, Ph.D., of Philadelphia, has been appointed to the LGBT Youth Suicide Prevention Task Force of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention based in Washington D.C. Rutter is both an assistant professor in the Human Sexuality Graduate Programs at Widener University in Chester, Pa., and a counseling psychologist out of Philadelphia. Among his areas of focus are consultations on suicide assessment, prevention and intervention strategies in addition to sexual orientation and identity concerns.

Rutter will pull from his clinical experience and personal research on youth suicide to help the task force fulfill its mission. The task force has set out to identify action steps that can be taken to reduce the prevalence of suicide among LGBT youth and to make recommendations to federal, state, and local governmental entities as well as to nongovernmental partners.

 

The creation of this task force by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention follows a string of suicides among LGBT youth that have made national headlines in addition to the release of data showing that lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are 3 times more likely to report having attempted suicide than their non-LGBT peers (Centers for Disease Control, 2005).

“I am honored to be part of this national effort to understand and stem suicide among our LGBT youth,” said Rutter.  My particular focus will include exploring protective factors and resilience in gay youth, as these skills would position their ability to counter the oppression they can experience at school, home or in their community.”

Rutter has served as a counseling psychologist since 1998, moving his practice from Denver to Philadelphia in 2009 when he joined the faculty of Widener’s Graduate Programs in Human Sexuality. At Widener, he teaches courses on clinical sexology, couples and relationship therapy, and sexual dysfunctions and treatment. He also researches and publishes academic articles on topics related to his expertise. He is best known in the field for developing a cumulative factor model that takes into account both protective and risk factors for assessing the likelihood of suicide in a client and then suggests intervention strategies (Rutter, 2009).

Rutter earned his bachelor’s from Penn State University and his master’s in counselor education and doctorate in counseling psychology from Temple University. Rutter was also appointed as the inaugural Sandra Williams' Postdoctoral Fellow (Temple University), offering Structural Family Therapy interventions for adolescent suicide attempters and their families.