Bisexual men on the ‘down low’ run risk for poor mental health
Higher Risk of Mental Health Problems for Homosexuals
Homosexual people tend to experience more mental health problems than heterosexual people, research indicates. Discrimination may contribute to the higher risk, believes lead researcher Dr. Apu Chakraborty of University College London, UK.
His team looked at rates of mental disorder among 7,403 adults living in the UK, whose details were obtained from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007. Rates of depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobia, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and alcohol and drug dependence were significantly higher in homosexual respondents.
Four percent had a depressive episode in the last week, compared to two percent of heterosexual people. The rate of alcohol dependence was ten percent versus five percent, and for self-harming it was nine percent versus five percent.
The proportion of homosexual people who described themselves as being fairly or very happy was 30 percent, versus 40 percent for heterosexual people.
Dr. Chakraborty believes the findings are “very worrying.” He said, “This study is the first time the mental health and well-being of gay, lesbian and bisexual people has been examined in a random sample of the population.
“Our study confirms earlier work carried out in the UK, USA and Holland which suggests that non-heterosexual people are at higher risk of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, substance misuse and self-harm than heterosexual people.”
He stated that, although the level of discrimination was low, it was still significantly higher than against heterosexual people. This “lends support to the idea that people who feel discriminated against experience social stressors, which in turn increases their risk of experiencing mental health problems,” he says.
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By Jane Collingwood
Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01-MH076680) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (T32-DA007233).
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A strong case can be made that the male homosexual lifestyle itself, in its most extreme form, is mentally disturbed. Remember that Rotello, a gay advocate, notes that “the outlaw aspect of gay sexual culture, its transgressiveness, is seen by many men as one of its greatest attributes.” Same-sex eroticism becomes for many, therefore, the central value of existence, and nothing else—not even life and health itself—is allowed to interfere with pursuit of this lifestyle. Homosexual promiscuity fuels the AIDS crisis in the West, but even that tragedy it is not allowed to interfere with sexual freedom.
And, according to Rotello, the idea of taking responsibility to avoid infecting others with the HIV virus is completely foreign to many groups trying to counter AIDS. The idea of protecting oneself is promoted, but protecting others is not mentioned in most official condom promotions (France in the ‘80s was an interesting exception). Bluntly, then, core gay behavior is both potentially fatal to others, and often suicidal.
Surely it should be considered “mentally disturbed” to risk losing one’s life for sexual liberation. This is surely among the most extreme risks practiced by any significant fraction of society. I have not found a higher risk of death accepted by any similar-sized population.
In conclusion, then, if we ask the question “Is mental illness inherent in the homosexual condition?” the answer would have to be “Further research - uncompromised by politics - should be carried out to honestly evaluate this issue.”
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Stephanie Berger
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Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health