Health Care and the LGBTQ Community
Wikipedia
Quick Teen Reads
LGBT topics in medicine are those that relate to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender access to health services. According to the US Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), besides HIV/AIDS, issues related to LGBT health include breast and cervical cancer, hepatitis, mental health, substance use disorders, tobacco use, depression, access to care for transgender persons, issues surrounding marriage and family recognition, conversion therapy, refusal clause legislation, and laws that are intended to "immunize health care professionals from liability for discriminating against persons of whom they disapprove."
LGBT people may face barriers to accessing healthcare on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity or expression. Many avoid or delay care or receive inappropriate or inferior care because of perceived or real homophobia or transphobia and discrimination by health care providers and institutions; in other words, negative personal experience, the assumption or expectation of negative experience based on knowing of history of such experience in other LGBT people, or both.
It is often pointed out that the reason of this is heterosexism in medical care and research:
"heterosexism can be purposeful (decreased funding or support of research projects that focus on sexual orientation) or unconscious (demographic questions on intake forms that ask the respondent to rate herself or himself as married, divorced, or single). These forms of discrimination limit medical research and negatively impact the health care of LGB individuals. This disparity is particularly extreme for lesbians (compared to homosexual men) because they have a double minority status, and experience oppression for being both female and homosexual."
Especially with lesbian patients, they may be discriminated in three ways:
Homophobic attitudes
Heterosexist judgements and behavior
General sexism – focusing primarily on male health concerns and services; assigning subordinate to that of men health roles for women, as for service providers and service recipients.
Causes of LGBT Health Disparities
During the past decade, the LGBT social movement in United States and worldwide contributed to the increasing trend of public recognition and acceptance toward the community. Reports from the Institute of Medicine, US National Institutes of Health and other nonprofit organizations have called to address the gap in LGBT training and education for healthcare professionals. Current research indicate that LGBT individuals face disparity compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts regarding access to health facilities, qualities, and treatment outcomes. Some causes of lack of access to healthcare among LGBT people are: perceived or real discrimination, inequality in the workplace and health insurance sectors, and lack of competent care due to negligible LGBT health training in medical schools . In an online survey, 65% of health physicians heard negative comments from peers targeting LGBT patients, while 35% witnessed discrimination toward individuals in workplace.
Another survey shows that more than 90% of U.S. medical schools reported some hours of LGBT-specific content training in the curriculum during the pre-clinical years, while only two-thirds of schools reported in clinical years. Medical students are less likely to discriminate against LGBT patients if they can practice taking medical history from LGBT patients. Healthcare professionals working with little to no knowledge about the LGBT community can result in a lack of or a decline in the type of healthcare these families receive: "Fundamentally, the distinctive healthcare needs of lesbian women go unnoticed, are deemed unimportant or are simply ignored." Views like these lead to the belief that health care training can exclude the topic related to the healthcare of LGBT and make certain members of the LGBT community feel as though they can be exempt from healthcare without any bodily consequences.
An upstream issue is the relative lack of official data on gender identity that health policy makers could use to plan, cost, implement and evaluate health policies and programs to improve transgender population health. The 'What We Know Project' reviewed thousands of peer-reviewed studies and found a strong link between discrimination and harm to the health of LGBT people. The findings showed that the presence of discrimination, stigma, and prejudice creates a hostile social climate which increase the risk of poor mental and physical health, even for those not directly exposed to the discrimination. This creates a situation known as 'minority stress' which includes low self-esteem and expectations, fear of discrimination and internalised stigma - which all contribute to health disparities.
LGBT Health and Social Support Networks
LGBT health outcomes are strongly influenced by social support networks, peers, and family. One example of a support network now available to some LGBT youth include Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), which are clubs that work to improve the climate for LGBT youth at schools and educate students and staff about issues faced by the LGBT community. In order to investigate the effects of GSAs on LGBT youth, 149 college-aged students that self-identified as LGBT completed a survey that assessed their high school's climate for LGBT youth, and their current health and alcohol dependency outcomes. Those participants who had a GSA at their high school (GSA+ youth) reported higher senses of belonging, less at-school victimization because of their sexual orientation, more favorable outcomes related to their alcohol use behaviors, and greater positive outcomes related to depression and general psychological distress when compared to those without a GSA (GSA- youth). Amongst other competing variables that contributed to these outcomes, the vast majority of schools that had a GSA were located in urban and suburban areas that tend to be safer and more accepting of LGBT people in general.
Family and social support networks also relate with mental health trajectories amongst LGBT youth. Family rejection upon a youth "coming out" sometimes results in adverse health outcomes. In fact, LGBT youth who experienced Family rejection were 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide, 5.9 times more likely to experience elevated levels of depression, and 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs than those LGBT youth who were accepted by family members. Family rejection sometimes leads youth to either run away from home or be kicked out of their home, which relates to the high rate of homelessness experienced by LGBT youth. In turn, homelessness relates to an array of adverse health outcomes that sometimes stem from homeless LGBT youths' elevated rates of involvement in prostitution and survival sex.
One longitudinal study of 248 youth across 5.5 years found that LGBT youth that have strong family and peer support experience less distress across all-time points relative to those who have uniformly low family and peer support. Overtime, the psychological distress experienced by LGBT youth decreased, regardless of the amount of family and peer support that they received during adolescence. Nonetheless, the decrease in distress was greater for youth with low peer and family support than for those participants with high support. At age 17, those who lacked family support but had high peer support exhibited the highest levels of distress, but this distress level lowered to nearly the same level as those reporting high levels of support within a few years. Those LGBT youth without family support but with strong support from their peers reported an increase in family support over the years in spite of having reported the lowest family support at the age of 17.
Similarly, another study of 232 LGBT youth between the ages of 16-20 found that those with low family and social support reported higher rates of hopelessness, loneliness, depression, anxiety, somatization, suicidality, global severity, and symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) than those who received strong family and non-family support. In contrast, those who solely received non-family support reported worse outcomes for all measured health outcomes except for anxiety and hopelessness, for which there was no difference.
Some studies have found poorer mental health outcomes for bisexual people than gay men and lesbians, which has been attributed to some degree to this community's lack of acceptance and validation both within and outside of the LGBT community. One qualitative study interviewed 55 bisexual people in order to identify common reasons for higher rates of mental health problems. The testimonials that were collected and organized into macro level (social structure), meso level (interpersonal), and micro level (individual) factors. At the social structure level, bisexuals noted that they were constantly asked to explain and justify their sexual orientation, and experienced biphobia and monosexism from individuals both within and outside of the LGBT community.
Many also stated that their identity was repetitively degraded by others, and that they are assumed to be promiscuous and hypersexual. During dates with others that did not identify as bisexual, some sighted being attacked and rejected solely based their sexual orientation. One female bisexual participant stated that upon going on a date with a lesbian female, "...she was very anti-bisexual. She said, ‘You're sitting on the fence. Make a choice, either you're gay or straight'" (p. 498). Family members similarly questioned and criticized their identity. One participant recalled that his sister stated that she would prefer if her sibling were gay instead of "...this slutty person who just sleeps with everyone" (p. 498). At the personal level, many bisexual struggle to accept themselves due to society's negative social attitudes and beliefs about bisexuality. In order to address issues of self acceptance, participants recommended embracing spirituality, exercise, the arts, and other activities that promote emotional health.
Mental Health
According to transgender advocate Rebecca Allison, trans people are "particularly prone" to depression and anxiety: "In addition to loss of family and friends, they face job stress and the risk of unemployment. Trans people who have not transitioned and remain in their birth gender are very prone to depression and anxiety. Suicide is a risk, both prior to transition and afterward. One of the most important aspects of the transgender therapy relationship is management of depression and/or anxiety." Depression is significantly correlated with experienced discrimination. In a study of San Francisco trans women, 62% reported depression. In a 2003 study of 1093 trans men and trans women, there was a prevalence of 44.1% for clinical depression and 33.2% for anxiety.
Suicide attempts are common in transgender people. In some transgender populations the majority have attempted suicide at least once. 41% of the respondents of the National Transgender discrimination Survey reported having attempted suicide. This statistic was even higher for certain demographics – for example, 56% of American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender respondents had attempted suicide. In contrast, 1.6% of the American population has attempted suicide. In the sample all minority ethnic groups (Asian, Latino, black, American Indian and mixed race) had higher prevalence of suicide attempts than white people. Number of suicide attempts was also correlated with life challenges - 64% of those surveyed who had been sexually assaulted had attempted suicide. 76% who had been assaulted by teachers or other school staff had made an attempt.
In 2012 the Scottish Transgender Alliance conducted the Trans Mental Health Study. 74% of the respondents who had transitioned reported improved mental health after transitioning. 53% had self-harmed at some point, and 11% currently self-harmed. 55% had been diagnosed with or had a current diagnosis of depression. An additional 33% believed that they currently had depression, or had done in the past, but had not been diagnosed. 5% had a current or past eating disorder diagnosis. 19% believed that they had suffered from an eating disorder or currently had one, but had not been diagnosed. 84% of the sample had experienced suicide ideation and 48% had made a suicide attempt. 3% had attempted suicide more than 10 times. 63% of respondents who transitioned thought about and attempted suicide less after transitioning. Other studies have found similar results.
Trans women appear to be at greater risk than trans men and the general population of dying of suicide. However, trans men are more likely to attempt suicide than trans women.
Personality disorders are common in transgender people.
Gender identity disorder is currently classed as a psychiatric condition by the DSM IV-TR. The upcoming DSM-5 removes GID and replaces it with 'gender dysphoria', which is not classified by some authorities as a mental illness. Until the 1970s, psychotherapy was the primary treatment for GID. However, today the treatment protocol involves biomedical interventions, with psychotherapy on its own being unusual. There has been controversy about the inclusion of transsexuality in the DSM, one claim being that Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood was introduced to the DSM-III in 1980 as a 'backdoor-maneuver' to replace homosexuality, which was removed from the DSM-II in 1973.
LGBT people may face barriers to accessing healthcare on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity or expression. Many avoid or delay care or receive inappropriate or inferior care because of perceived or real homophobia or transphobia and discrimination by health care providers and institutions; in other words, negative personal experience, the assumption or expectation of negative experience based on knowing of history of such experience in other LGBT people, or both.
It is often pointed out that the reason of this is heterosexism in medical care and research:
"heterosexism can be purposeful (decreased funding or support of research projects that focus on sexual orientation) or unconscious (demographic questions on intake forms that ask the respondent to rate herself or himself as married, divorced, or single). These forms of discrimination limit medical research and negatively impact the health care of LGB individuals. This disparity is particularly extreme for lesbians (compared to homosexual men) because they have a double minority status, and experience oppression for being both female and homosexual."
Especially with lesbian patients, they may be discriminated in three ways:
Homophobic attitudes
Heterosexist judgements and behavior
General sexism – focusing primarily on male health concerns and services; assigning subordinate to that of men health roles for women, as for service providers and service recipients.
Causes of LGBT Health Disparities
During the past decade, the LGBT social movement in United States and worldwide contributed to the increasing trend of public recognition and acceptance toward the community. Reports from the Institute of Medicine, US National Institutes of Health and other nonprofit organizations have called to address the gap in LGBT training and education for healthcare professionals. Current research indicate that LGBT individuals face disparity compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts regarding access to health facilities, qualities, and treatment outcomes. Some causes of lack of access to healthcare among LGBT people are: perceived or real discrimination, inequality in the workplace and health insurance sectors, and lack of competent care due to negligible LGBT health training in medical schools . In an online survey, 65% of health physicians heard negative comments from peers targeting LGBT patients, while 35% witnessed discrimination toward individuals in workplace.
Another survey shows that more than 90% of U.S. medical schools reported some hours of LGBT-specific content training in the curriculum during the pre-clinical years, while only two-thirds of schools reported in clinical years. Medical students are less likely to discriminate against LGBT patients if they can practice taking medical history from LGBT patients. Healthcare professionals working with little to no knowledge about the LGBT community can result in a lack of or a decline in the type of healthcare these families receive: "Fundamentally, the distinctive healthcare needs of lesbian women go unnoticed, are deemed unimportant or are simply ignored." Views like these lead to the belief that health care training can exclude the topic related to the healthcare of LGBT and make certain members of the LGBT community feel as though they can be exempt from healthcare without any bodily consequences.
An upstream issue is the relative lack of official data on gender identity that health policy makers could use to plan, cost, implement and evaluate health policies and programs to improve transgender population health. The 'What We Know Project' reviewed thousands of peer-reviewed studies and found a strong link between discrimination and harm to the health of LGBT people. The findings showed that the presence of discrimination, stigma, and prejudice creates a hostile social climate which increase the risk of poor mental and physical health, even for those not directly exposed to the discrimination. This creates a situation known as 'minority stress' which includes low self-esteem and expectations, fear of discrimination and internalised stigma - which all contribute to health disparities.
LGBT Health and Social Support Networks
LGBT health outcomes are strongly influenced by social support networks, peers, and family. One example of a support network now available to some LGBT youth include Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), which are clubs that work to improve the climate for LGBT youth at schools and educate students and staff about issues faced by the LGBT community. In order to investigate the effects of GSAs on LGBT youth, 149 college-aged students that self-identified as LGBT completed a survey that assessed their high school's climate for LGBT youth, and their current health and alcohol dependency outcomes. Those participants who had a GSA at their high school (GSA+ youth) reported higher senses of belonging, less at-school victimization because of their sexual orientation, more favorable outcomes related to their alcohol use behaviors, and greater positive outcomes related to depression and general psychological distress when compared to those without a GSA (GSA- youth). Amongst other competing variables that contributed to these outcomes, the vast majority of schools that had a GSA were located in urban and suburban areas that tend to be safer and more accepting of LGBT people in general.
Family and social support networks also relate with mental health trajectories amongst LGBT youth. Family rejection upon a youth "coming out" sometimes results in adverse health outcomes. In fact, LGBT youth who experienced Family rejection were 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide, 5.9 times more likely to experience elevated levels of depression, and 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs than those LGBT youth who were accepted by family members. Family rejection sometimes leads youth to either run away from home or be kicked out of their home, which relates to the high rate of homelessness experienced by LGBT youth. In turn, homelessness relates to an array of adverse health outcomes that sometimes stem from homeless LGBT youths' elevated rates of involvement in prostitution and survival sex.
One longitudinal study of 248 youth across 5.5 years found that LGBT youth that have strong family and peer support experience less distress across all-time points relative to those who have uniformly low family and peer support. Overtime, the psychological distress experienced by LGBT youth decreased, regardless of the amount of family and peer support that they received during adolescence. Nonetheless, the decrease in distress was greater for youth with low peer and family support than for those participants with high support. At age 17, those who lacked family support but had high peer support exhibited the highest levels of distress, but this distress level lowered to nearly the same level as those reporting high levels of support within a few years. Those LGBT youth without family support but with strong support from their peers reported an increase in family support over the years in spite of having reported the lowest family support at the age of 17.
Similarly, another study of 232 LGBT youth between the ages of 16-20 found that those with low family and social support reported higher rates of hopelessness, loneliness, depression, anxiety, somatization, suicidality, global severity, and symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) than those who received strong family and non-family support. In contrast, those who solely received non-family support reported worse outcomes for all measured health outcomes except for anxiety and hopelessness, for which there was no difference.
Some studies have found poorer mental health outcomes for bisexual people than gay men and lesbians, which has been attributed to some degree to this community's lack of acceptance and validation both within and outside of the LGBT community. One qualitative study interviewed 55 bisexual people in order to identify common reasons for higher rates of mental health problems. The testimonials that were collected and organized into macro level (social structure), meso level (interpersonal), and micro level (individual) factors. At the social structure level, bisexuals noted that they were constantly asked to explain and justify their sexual orientation, and experienced biphobia and monosexism from individuals both within and outside of the LGBT community.
Many also stated that their identity was repetitively degraded by others, and that they are assumed to be promiscuous and hypersexual. During dates with others that did not identify as bisexual, some sighted being attacked and rejected solely based their sexual orientation. One female bisexual participant stated that upon going on a date with a lesbian female, "...she was very anti-bisexual. She said, ‘You're sitting on the fence. Make a choice, either you're gay or straight'" (p. 498). Family members similarly questioned and criticized their identity. One participant recalled that his sister stated that she would prefer if her sibling were gay instead of "...this slutty person who just sleeps with everyone" (p. 498). At the personal level, many bisexual struggle to accept themselves due to society's negative social attitudes and beliefs about bisexuality. In order to address issues of self acceptance, participants recommended embracing spirituality, exercise, the arts, and other activities that promote emotional health.
Mental Health
According to transgender advocate Rebecca Allison, trans people are "particularly prone" to depression and anxiety: "In addition to loss of family and friends, they face job stress and the risk of unemployment. Trans people who have not transitioned and remain in their birth gender are very prone to depression and anxiety. Suicide is a risk, both prior to transition and afterward. One of the most important aspects of the transgender therapy relationship is management of depression and/or anxiety." Depression is significantly correlated with experienced discrimination. In a study of San Francisco trans women, 62% reported depression. In a 2003 study of 1093 trans men and trans women, there was a prevalence of 44.1% for clinical depression and 33.2% for anxiety.
Suicide attempts are common in transgender people. In some transgender populations the majority have attempted suicide at least once. 41% of the respondents of the National Transgender discrimination Survey reported having attempted suicide. This statistic was even higher for certain demographics – for example, 56% of American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender respondents had attempted suicide. In contrast, 1.6% of the American population has attempted suicide. In the sample all minority ethnic groups (Asian, Latino, black, American Indian and mixed race) had higher prevalence of suicide attempts than white people. Number of suicide attempts was also correlated with life challenges - 64% of those surveyed who had been sexually assaulted had attempted suicide. 76% who had been assaulted by teachers or other school staff had made an attempt.
In 2012 the Scottish Transgender Alliance conducted the Trans Mental Health Study. 74% of the respondents who had transitioned reported improved mental health after transitioning. 53% had self-harmed at some point, and 11% currently self-harmed. 55% had been diagnosed with or had a current diagnosis of depression. An additional 33% believed that they currently had depression, or had done in the past, but had not been diagnosed. 5% had a current or past eating disorder diagnosis. 19% believed that they had suffered from an eating disorder or currently had one, but had not been diagnosed. 84% of the sample had experienced suicide ideation and 48% had made a suicide attempt. 3% had attempted suicide more than 10 times. 63% of respondents who transitioned thought about and attempted suicide less after transitioning. Other studies have found similar results.
Trans women appear to be at greater risk than trans men and the general population of dying of suicide. However, trans men are more likely to attempt suicide than trans women.
Personality disorders are common in transgender people.
Gender identity disorder is currently classed as a psychiatric condition by the DSM IV-TR. The upcoming DSM-5 removes GID and replaces it with 'gender dysphoria', which is not classified by some authorities as a mental illness. Until the 1970s, psychotherapy was the primary treatment for GID. However, today the treatment protocol involves biomedical interventions, with psychotherapy on its own being unusual. There has been controversy about the inclusion of transsexuality in the DSM, one claim being that Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood was introduced to the DSM-III in 1980 as a 'backdoor-maneuver' to replace homosexuality, which was removed from the DSM-II in 1973.