Health issu for gay men and other men who have sex wh men - Mayo Clic

Contents:

• GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN'S HEALTH
• CANCER FACTS FOR GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN
• LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR HEALTH
• YET ANOTHER STUDY CONFIRMS GAY LIFE EXPECTANCY 20 YEARS SHORTER
• MOLLG THE IMPACT OF HIV DISEASE ON MORTALY GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN

GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN'S HEALTH

Another 1997 study om pro-homosexual rearchers who were tryg fend homosexuals, examed data of AIDS aths between 1987 to 1992 Toronto, and found that the life expectancy for the homosexual men was 8 to 20 years lower than heterosexuals. The human papillomavis (HPV) vacce is also available for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex wh men up to 26 years of age to prevent genal warts and other HPV-associated diseas and ndns such as oropharyngeal or anal ncer.

Further, as relied on registered same-genr domtic partnership stat to intify gay and bisexual men, the earlier study did not acunt for the possible health benefs of livg wh a partner27 and th may have unrtimated mortaly risk for MSM general. Th, timat om men livg admistratively documented partnerships likely reprent only a small segment of the gay and bisexual male one of the first natnal health data sets the Uned Stat to measure markers of sexual orientatn routely, the Natnal Health and Nutrn Examatn Survey s third eratn (NHANES III; 1988–1994) ially began s asssment of sexual orientatn wh a rtricted set of qutns pertag to lifetime histori of the genrs of rponnts’ sexual partners. Although suici-related aths were relatively rare the NHANES III sample (n =18), if they occurred among homosexually experienced men at the same rate reported the recent study of Danish men registered domtic partnerships, 24 would have been tectable the current study.

Routely llectg rmatn on markers of sexual orientatn health surveys likewise will facilate trackg the health of people wh mory sexual orientatn and will rce the impact of modifiable health threats that may be elevated among gay and bisexual men. The homophobic groups appear more terted rtrictg the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promotg their health and well aim of our rearch was never to spread more homophobia, but to monstrate to an ternatnal dience how the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men n be timated om limed val statistics data. Gay and bisexual men are clud the nstctn of official populatn-based tabl and therefore the tabl for all mal are the appropriate on to be summary, the aim of our work was to assist health planners wh the means of timatg the impact of HIV fectn on groups, like gay and bisexual men, not necsarily ptured by val statistics data and not to hr the rights of the groups worldwi.

CANCER FACTS FOR GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN

To plement this rearch I took a different approach: I examed 6, 089 obuari of homosexual men om four homosexual magaz: The Bay Area Reporter, the Washgton Bla, the New York Bla and This Week, published between 1980 to 2014 clive.

WASHINGTON, DC, June 6, 2005 () – A new study which analyzed tens of thoands of gay obuari and pared them wh AIDS aths data om the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), has shown that the life expectancy for homosexuals is about twenty years shorter than that of the general public. The Vanuver study was nducted by a team of pro-gay rearchers, who, upon fdg that pro-fay advot were g the rults of their rearch as nfirmatn for their beliefs about the risks of the homosexual liftyle, issued a statement tryg to curb this untend after-effect.

LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR HEALTH

“The aim of our work, ” said the rearch team, “was to assist health planners wh the means of timatg the impact of HIV fectn on groups, like gay and bisexual men, not necsarily ptured by val statistics data and not to hr the rights of the groups worldwi. Dpe their attempts to downplay the practil nsequenc of their rearch, is difficult to ignore that the study nclud wh the statement that “unr even the most liberal assumptns, gay and bisexual men this urban centre [Vanuver, BC] are now experiencg a life expectancy siar to that experienced by all men Canada the year 1871. Physician Says Science of Medil Consequenc of Homosexual Behavur is Beg Tmped by Polil AgendaThe Negative Health Effects of HomosexualySame-Sex ‘Marriage’ a Health Risk Doctors Warn ParliamentariansDoctors Say Legalizg Same-Sex Marriage Will Give False Imprsn Gay Sex is SafeJJ.

"Wh signifint vtment medil rourc, homosexuals are livg longer than prev years wh their promised health stat, but neverthels still shorter liv than parable married heterosexuals who don’t eat up medil rourc to the same extent, " Marshall wrote.

YET ANOTHER STUDY CONFIRMS GAY LIFE EXPECTANCY 20 YEARS SHORTER

Four ntemporary databas were ed to tt that timate: (1) obuari the homosexual prs om 1993 through 1997 reflected treatment succs for those wh AIDS but suggted a median age of ath ls than 50 years; (2) two large random sexualy surveys 1994--one the USA and the other Bra--yield rults nsistent wh a median age of ath for homosexuals of ls than 50 years; (3) the median age of those ever married Denmark, Swen, and Norway was about 50 years, while that of the ever homosexually partnered was about 40 yr; further, the married were about 5 tim more apt to be old and 4 tim ls apt to be widowed young; and (4) traveno dg abers and homosexuals takg HIV tts Colorado had almost intil age distributns. Marriage may protect agast the societal challeng of beg gay, or healthier gay men may be more likely to enter the other hand, Frisch said, the data suggt that men and women who are gay still stggle more than their straight unterparts. "It is important now to intify those factors that make more homosexuals than heterosexuals vulnerable to life's challeng to such an extent that suici may appear to be the only way out, " Frisch rearchers report their fdgs onle today (March 11) the Internatnal Journal of Stephanie Pappas @sipappas.

Before enterg adulthood, the olst of this hort would have seen, 1952, the creatn of an official diagnosis that listed homosexualy as a socpathic personaly disturbance (Bayer, 1987) and watched Senator McCarthy clu gay men and lbians on his blacklist.

As adults, this hort wnsed route harassment by thori, as well as the Stonewall Rebelln 1969 and the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn's removal of homosexualy om the Diagnostic and Statistil Manual of Mental Disorrs 1973 (see Chapter 2 for a full historil overview) all adults, later life is known as a perd of both growth and cle (Balt et al., 1999), wh studi on the latter vastly outnumberg those on the former. DEVELOPMENT OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND GENDER IDENTITYAlthough the age at which gay men and lbians e out appears to be earlier today than prev horts, there remas great variabily the time of g out and evince that the procs may extend over the life urse (Brown et al., 2001; Vri and Blando, 2004).

MOLLG THE IMPACT OF HIV DISEASE ON MORTALY GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN

Uneven and smaller subsampl of racial and ethnic mory LGB persons prevented fuller analys; however, wh-hort analys revealed no racial differenc the age at which participants me out to themselv and the Still Out, Still Agg: The MetLife Study of Lbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgenr Baby Boomers (MetLife, 2010) natnal survey of LGBT people aged 45–64 (n = 1, 201), the extent to which LGBT rponnts reported beg out varied signifintly. Bisexual people were ls likely to disclose their sexual orientatn than the other subpopulatns; only 12 percent of bisexual people said they were open wh anyone, pared wh 30 percent of lbians, 38 percent of gay men, and 28 percent of transgenr rponnts (MetLife, 2010) his sendary analysis of 372 men aged 50–85 the Urban Men's Health Study—a probabilistic sample of men who have sex wh men obtaed San Francis, Los Angel, Chigo, and New York g a modified random-dig dialg approach—Rawls (2004) found that almost 5 percent of the men this sample had never told someone they were gay or bisexual; half of the men had not told someone else they were gay or bisexual until after the age of 21 and about one-quarter of the men until after age 26. This latter fdg particular is remiscent of rults of earlier rearch, particularly Lee's (1987) study of olr Canadian gay men and Alman's (1990) study of a small sample of gay men and lbians over age 60 the San Francis Bay Area.

This velopmental pathway has been scribed as late onset (as opposed to early onset [Doorn et al., 1994]), sendary (as opposed to primary [Person and Ovey, 1974]), margal (as opposed to nuclear [Buhrich and McConaghy, 1978]), or togynephilic (as opposed to homosexual) transsexualism1 (Blanchard, 1989), acrdg to the typologi, most transsexual men and many transsexual women experience a strong cross-genr inty startg childhood (primary transsexualism). The statistics differ dramatilly by genr: men die by suici at a rate five tim that among agast this backdrop, the lifetime risk of suici attempts appears particularly high among gay and bisexual men, as reported a metareview by Kg and lleagu (2008), although this analysis had no age-specific foc.

4 years (one-quarter of men this hort who had attempted suici had done so before age 25) a study g the prevly scribed data set of 416 self-intified lbian, gay, and bisexual adults aged 60–91, D'Augelli and Grossman (2001) found that 13 percent of their sample had attempted suici (an attempt was pecially likely among those who had been victimized at some pot their liv, as scribed further below). 5 percent of heterosexual adults (n = 371) (Massachetts Department of Public Health, 2009) a natnal study parg more than 1, 200 LGBT people aged 45–64 wh a group of jt over 1, 200 dividuals aged 45–64 om the general populatn, the MetLife (2010) survey found that the percentage reportg recent receipt of (and need for) re was greatt (19 percent) among the 5 percent of the sample intifyg as transgenr—parable to the percentage of lbians, somewhat greater than the percentage of bisexual women and men (17 percent), and much higher than the percentage of gay men as well as women and men om the general populatn (9 percent). While the very notn of a gay and lbian gerontology rais the issue of sexualy directly ( Vri and Blando, 2004), limed rearch has explored sexual health among olr LGBT ntrast, there is some rearch on sexual dysfunctn the groups.

Of those reportg sexual difficulti, jt unr two-thirds ced health problems and/or meditns as a ntributg factor, and more than one-third ced psychologil reference to sexual dysfunctn is clud rearch on prostate ncer, as noted by Asenc and lleagu (2009) their qualative foc group study of 36 midlife and olr gay men (the majory beg aged 50–70). Blank and lleagu (2009) suggt that the experienc for gay men, who often lack long-term partners and may be participants sexual behavrs that differ om those tradnal heterosexual enunters, may be que different and largely prevly mentned, data om foc groups (a total of five groups prisg 36 participants wh a mean age of 49. The gay men the groups, of varyg socenomic stat, addrsed physician–patient relatnships, cludg g out to one's medil provir (an issue also noted other rearch), as well the potential treatment-related sexual problems attributable to their sexual practic, sexual rol, and beliefs about gay relatnships and the gay muny (Asenc et al., 2009).

While the percentage of gay and bisexual men clud the timat is not clear, the percentage n be assumed to be large given that more than half of all new HIV fectns the Uned Stat occur among men who have sex wh men (CDC, 2010). Although no published data addrs the risk and prevalence of HIV among transgenr persons, a variety of muny-based needs asssments suggt that they have a higher risk than (primarily whe) gay men of parable are siari between the agg procs and the urse of HIV fectn, wh some evince suggtg that HIV prs the agg procs, possibly acceleratg the velopment of morbidi and ailty (see High et al., 2008). They ced fewer opportuni to fd a new relatnship, fear of beg doubly discrimated agast as they age, feelg vulnerable wh health re provirs, and havg fewer opportuni for social an earlier review of almost 60 studi on gay men and agg, the thors found that happs and succsful adaptatn to agg were monly reported by olr gay men, perhaps bee of pg skills and petenci that are particularly well veloped among agg homosexuals (Wahler and Gabbay, 1997) the fdgs, the lerature documents a number of risk and protective factors that fluence the health of LGBT people throughout the life urse.

In foc group rearch nducted across Canada, Brotman and lleagu (2003) found that olr gay men and lbians (n = 21) often spoke of mistst of the health and social service works as a rult of lifelong experienc of margalizatn and opprsn. Such experienc ntued to the prent day, wh many stanc of overt homophobia and ageism and vert experienc of neglect and visibily beg reported—both wh the LGBT muny and more prevly noted, few studi have explicly examed racial and ethnic groups their sampl.

One exceptn is David and Knight (2008), who found a study of 383 whe and black gay men om across the adult life urse that the olr black gay men experienced signifintly higher levels of ageism than the olr whe gay men and higher levels of perceived racism than the younger black gay men.

It is notable that the olr black gay men did not experience higher levels of negative mental health bed stigma of beg elrly and transgenr n serve as a strong trmatizg force, potentially exacerbatg both forms of discrimatn and stigma (Wten and Eyler, 2007).