23
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Mental health help seeking patterns and associations among Australian same sex attracted women, trans and gender diverse people: a survey-based study

      research-article
      ,
      BMC Psychiatry
      BioMed Central
      Mental health, Help-seeking, Barriers, Enablers, Sexual orientation, Gender identity, Peer support

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Background

          Same sex attracted women (SSAW) are disproportionately affected by depression and anxiety, due to experiences of sexuality and gender based discrimination. They access mental health services at higher rates than heterosexual women, however with lower levels of satisfaction. This study examined the range of professional and social help seeking by same-sex attracted women, and patterns according to sexual orientation and gender identity subgroup.

          Methods

          Eight key stakeholders were interviewed, and a convenience sample of 1628 Australian SSAW completed an online survey in 2015. This included several scales to measure mental health, community connectedness and resilience; and measured past 12 month help seeking behaviour, enablers, barriers and preferences for mental health care. Chi-square analyses and binary logistic regression analyses examined demographic associations with mental health. Correlations between help seeking, mental and physical health, and connectedness were run.

          Results

          A high proportion (80 %) of the total sample had perceived mental health problems over the past 12 months. Over half had depression, and over 96 % had anxiety. Trans and gender diverse participants were twice as likely as female participants to have mental health problems, and lesbians were least likely. High levels of past 12 month help seeking included 74.4 % seeing a GP, 44.3 % seeing a psychologist/counsellor, 74.7 % seeking family/friends support and 55.2 % using internet based support. Professional help was prioritised by those with higher mental health need. Trans participants were most likely to have sought professional help and participated in support groups, but least likely to have sought help from friends or family. The most common barriers to help seeking were discrimination and lack of LGBTI sensitivity of services, particularly for gender diverse, queer and pansexual participants. Enablers included mainstream community connectedness, having a trustworthy GP, and encouragement by friends.

          Conclusions

          Mental health services need to be LGBTI inclusive and to understand the emerging diverse sexual and gender identities. Peer support is an important adjunct to professional support, however may not be fully meeting the needs of some identity sub-groups. Mental health promotion should be tailored for diverse sub-groups to build mental health literacy and resilience in the face of ongoing discrimination.

          Related collections

          Most cited references46

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Screening for depression in well older adults: evaluation of a short form of the CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale).

          We derived and tested a short form of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) for reliability and validity among a sample of well older adults in a large Health Maintenance Organization. The 10-item screening questionnaire, the CESD-10, showed good predictive accuracy when compared to the full-length 20-item version of the CES-D (kappa = .97, P or = 16 for the full-length questionnaire and > or = 10 for the 10-item version. We discuss other potential cutoff values. The CESD-10 showed an expected positive correlation with poorer health status scores (r = .37) and a strong negative correlation with positive affect (r = -.63). Retest correlations for the CESD-10 were comparable to those in other studies (r = .71). We administered the CESD-10 again after 12 months, and scores were stable with strong correlation of r = .59.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Interpreting scores on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10)

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Prevalence of mental disorders, psychological distress, and mental health services use among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults in the United States.

              Recent estimates of mental health morbidity among adults reporting same-gender sexual partners suggest that lesbians, gay men, and bisexual individuals may experience excess risk for some mental disorders as compared with heterosexual individuals. However, sexual orientation has not been measured directly. Using data from a nationally representative survey of 2,917 midlife adults, the authors examined possible sexual orientation-related differences in morbidity, distress, and mental health services use. Results indicate that gay-bisexual men evidenced higher prevalence of depression, panic attacks, and psychological distress than heterosexual men. Lesbian-bisexual women showed greater prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder than heterosexual women. Services use was more frequent among those of minority sexual orientation. Findings support the existence of sexual orientation differences in patterns of morbidity and treatment use.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                r.mcnair@unimelb.edu.au
                rachel.isaacs@deakin.edu.au
                Journal
                BMC Psychiatry
                BMC Psychiatry
                BMC Psychiatry
                BioMed Central (London )
                1471-244X
                4 July 2016
                4 July 2016
                2016
                : 16
                : 209
                Affiliations
                [ ]Department of General Practice, University of Melbourne, 200 Berkeley St, Carlton, 3053 Victoria Australia
                [ ]School of Nursing and Midwifery, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, 3125 Australia
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4738-8781
                Article
                916
                10.1186/s12888-016-0916-4
                4932693
                27377408
                6833d6b9-e645-48f1-9f2c-6ed99fe94463
                © The Author(s). 2016

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 20 November 2015
                : 8 June 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001166, beyondblue;
                Award ID: project reference CLT: 7195
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2016

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                mental health,help-seeking,barriers,enablers,sexual orientation,gender identity,peer support

                Comments

                Comment on this article