LGB adults experience higher rates of distress, impaired physical health than heterosexuals

Aug 20, 2016 by Jill

from News Medical:

In one of the largest, most representative health surveys conducted to date, lesbian, gay and bisexual adults reported substantially higher rates of severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and smoking, and impaired physical health than did heterosexuals.

The National Health Interview Survey, one of the nation’s leading health surveys, collected responses from approximately 68,000 adults. The results were reported today in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine by researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

The results, which support earlier findings of smaller, less representative surveys of the LGB and transgender community, “should serve as a call to health care professionals and public health practitioners to pay particular attention to … this small, diverse and vulnerable population,” the authors concluded.

“This study adds to the previous research on LGBT health disparities and has important implications for policy and practice,” said Gilbert Gonzales, Ph.D., M.H.A., the study’s corresponding author and assistant professor of Health Policy at Vanderbilt.

Read here