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Increased risks for mental disorders among LGB individuals: cross-national evidence from the World Mental Health Surveys

2022; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 57; Issue: 11 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s00127-022-02320-z

1433-9285

Jan-Ole H. Gmelin, Ymkje Anna de Vries, Laura Baams, Sergio Aguilar‐Gaxiola, Jordi Alonso, Guilherme Borges, Brendan Bunting, Graça Cardoso, Silvia Florescu, Oye Gureje, Elie G. Karam, Norito Kawakami, Sing Lee, Zeina Mneimneh, Fernando Navarro‐Mateu, José Posada‐Villa, Charlene Rapsey, Tim Slade, Juan Carlos Stagnaro, Yolanda Torres, Ronald C. Kessler, Peter de Jonge, Sergio Aguilar‐Gaxiola, Amit Malik, Jordi Alonso, Laura Helena Andrade, Lukoye Atwoli, Corina Benjet, Guilherme Borges, Evelyn J. Bromet, Ronny Bruffaerts, Brendan Bunting, José Miguel Caldas‐de‐Almeida, Graça Cardoso, Somnath Chatterji, H. Alfredo, Louisa Degenhardt, Koen Demyttenaere, Silvia Florescu, Giovanni de Girolamo, Oye Gureje, Josep María Haro, Meredith Harris, Hristo Hinkov, Chiyi Hu, Peter de Jonge, Aimée Karam, Elie G. Karam, Norito Kawakami, Ronald C. Kessler, Andrzej Kiejna, Viviane Kovess–Masféty, Sing Lee, Jean‐Pierre Lépine, John J. McGrath, María Elena Medina‐Mora, Zeina Mneimneh, Jacek Moskalewicz, Fernando Navarro‐Mateu, Marina Piazza, José Posada‐Villa, Kate M. Scott, Tim Slade, Juan Carlos Stagnaro, Dan J. Stein, Margreet ten Have, Yolanda Torres, María Carmen Viana, Daniel Vigo, Harvey Whiteford, David R. Williams, Bogdan Wojtyniak,

Racial and Ethnic Identity Research

Abstract Purpose Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, and LB women specifically, have an increased risk for psychiatric morbidity, theorized to result from stigma-based discrimination. To date, no study has investigated the mental health disparities between LGB and heterosexual AQ1individuals in a large cross-national population-based comparison. The current study addresses this gap by examining differences between LGB and heterosexual participants in 13 cross-national surveys, and by exploring whether these disparities were associated with country-level LGBT acceptance. Since lower social support has been suggested as a mediator of sexual orientation-based differences in psychiatric morbidity, our secondary aim was to examine whether mental health disparities were partially explained by general social support from family and friends. Methods Twelve-month prevalence of DSM-IV anxiety, mood, eating, disruptive behavior, and substance disorders was assessed with the WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview in a general population sample across 13 countries as part of the World Mental Health Surveys. Participants were 46,889 adults (19,887 males; 807 LGB-identified). Results Male and female LGB participants were more likely to report any 12-month disorder (OR 2.2, p < 0.001 and OR 2.7, p < 0.001, respectively) and most individual disorders than heterosexual participants. We found no evidence for an association between country-level LGBT acceptance and rates of psychiatric morbidity between LGB and heterosexualAQ2 participants. However, among LB women, the increased risk for mental disorders was partially explained by lower general openness with family, although most of the increased risk remained unexplained. Conclusion These results provide cross-national evidence for an association between sexual minority status and psychiatric morbidity, and highlight that for women, but not men, this association was partially mediated by perceived openness with family. Future research into individual-level and cross-national sexual minority stressors is needed.