You know, it wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association, after a
fairly lengthy period of debate, discussion, and advocacy, voted to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Discrimination, you know, comes in many forms. And the psychological
and the social implications of those are, you know, they’re not insignificant. So
if you do surveys of physicians and health care providers about their attitudes towards
LGBT people, 20 to 30 percent say, you know, “I’m really not comfortable providing
this kind of care.” Does one come out on an application to college or to medical school
or to law school or, you name it. These are questions that people struggle with even to
this very day. 90 percent or so of LGBT kids definitely say that they’ve experienced
this kind of thing on, kind of on a daily basis. Whether it’s being told or being
called “faggot” or whatever, made to feel badly because they’re different. These kinds
of things over time, sort of add up.
Discrimination, actual and perceived, then this expectation that develops for those events,
results in lower self-esteem, difficulty with relationships, difficulty with one’s own,
feeling happy about one’s own life. There is probably a two and a half or so times likelihood
of mental health disorders or problems among LGBT folks. Depression, anxiety, substance
abuse in particular. In particular for women actually, about three and a half times rate
of substance use disorders among lesbians and bisexual women. There are higher rates
of, certainly attempted suicide among LGBT communities. Exactly how many of those are
completed is harder to know. But I could certainly say just from our clinical work over the years,
it’s certainly not an uncommon kind of scenario, unfortunately.
There’s just no question that today is just 180 degrees different than the way it was when I was growing up in small
towns in the Midwest. As a middle-aged man, suddenly I was able to fight in the armed
services when DOMA went down in the 90s. Now, today, I can actually be married in all fifty
states. The fact that that has happened over this period of, what, fifty years or so is
really quite remarkable. As those negative attitudes lessen, I can’t help but think
that there’s going to be lesser mental health problems among LGBT folks.