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

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Abstract

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.

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Major depression is a frequent and disabling psychiatric disorder in the United States. This report examines the prevalence and risk factor profile of both pure and comorbid major depression according to data from the National Comorbidity Survey. To estimate the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity in the United States, a national sample of 8,098 persons 15-54 years of age from the 48 conterminous states was surveyed with a modified version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. From the survey data the prevalence of current (30-day) major depression was estimated to be 4.9%, with a relatively higher prevalence in females, young adults, and persons with less than a college education. The prevalence estimate for lifetime major depression was 17.1%, with a similar demographic distribution. Both 30-day and lifetime prevalence estimates were higher than estimates from the earlier Epidemiologic Catchment Area study. When pure major depression was compared with major depression co-occurring with other psychiatric disorders, the risk factor profiles exhibited clear differences. These findings suggest a greater burden of major depression in community-dwelling persons than has been estimated from previous community samples. The risk factor profile showed significant differences between persons with pure and combined major depression.

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Psychological sequelae of hate-crime victimization among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults.

Gregory Herek, J. Gillis, Jeanine C. Cogan (1999)

Questionnaire data about criminal victimization experiences were collected from 2,259 Sacramento-area lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (N = 1,170 women, 1,089 men). Approximately 1/5 of the women and 1/4 of the men had experienced victimization because of their adult sexual orientation. Hate crimes were less likely than nonbias crimes to have been reported to police. Compared with other recent crime victims, lesbian and gay hate-crime survivors manifested significantly more symptoms of depression, anger, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress. They also displayed significantly more crime-related fears and beliefs, lower sense of mastery, and more attributions of their personal setbacks to sexual prejudice than did nonbias crime victims and nonvictims. Comparable differences were not observed among bisexuals. The findings highlight the importance of recognizing hate-crime survivors' special needs in clinical settings and in public policy.

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Demographics of the gay and lesbian population in the United States: evidence from available systematic data sources.

D. Black, G. Gates, S. Sanders … (2000)

This work provides an overview of standard social science data sources that now allow some systematic study of the gay and lesbian population in the United States. For each data source, we consider how sexual orientation can be defined, and we note the potential sample sizes. We give special attention to the important problem of measurement error, especially the extent to which individuals recorded as gay and lesbian are indeed recorded correctly. Our concern is that because gays and lesbians constitute a relatively small fraction of the population, modest measurement problems could lead to serious errors in inference. In examining gays and lesbians in multiple data sets we also achieve a second objective: We provide a set of statistics about this population that is relevant to several current policy debates.