Health Disparities Exist Based On Sexual Orientation

[Spicygirl82]

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) has released the nation’s first statewide population-based look at health disparities based on sexual orientation. The report revealed significant disparities among people who identified as homosexual or bisexual in the areas of access to care, self-reported health status, anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, smoking, binge drinking, illicit drug use, sexual assault victimization, intimate partner violence, disability, obesity, asthma and heart disease.

http://www.emaxhealth.com/2/48/26832...ientation.html

Hmmm, I don't really know what to think about this. What do you all think about it?

[CrackBaby]

i'd say there's a lot of self-imposed and parent-imposed baggage that comes with being non-heterosexual. when your parents aren't that supportive or you have to hide your sexuality as is the case with many of these people you start not taking their advice on many different things that in the long run are pretty important (smoking, diet, lifestyle etc).


the other thing to it is that the stereotype is sorta true, a significant chunk of the GLBT community does sleep around at levels far exceeding heteros, basically everyone is acting full out natural at a gay bar, lesbians love the attention in straight bars, and many one night stands is a way of life for lots of people.

[Brandye]

Nice post, Spice. Interesting and I have never seen anything quite like it.

If you look at the stuff that bubbles, drinking, overeating, anxiety, etc, they are all forms of escape. The treatment of other than straights whether out or closeted would naturally give rise to this. Especially those who are living "normally" while in great pain in the closet would be likely to seek escape. I did have one gay male friend who literally drank himself to death over about twenty years. I was one of very few who ever knew he was gay.

As a bi- woman, neither flaunting it nor hiding, I think I am very lucky in never having knowingly been shunned - except by my sister for twenty years - and we have patched that up.