Studies on depression and death rates in gay population

[Annie-Xmas]

Some studies say the same thing about Rock Stars.

People have only been openly gay/rock stars for the past 40 years. People have been dying since time began.

How many 60, 70, 80 year old people have died who were in the closet? Unless the obit screams “QUEER,” there death would go down as “STRAIGHT”

[ZipperJJ]

@Markxxx

But all this aside, the study is flawed because it’s comparing two unlike lifestyles.

You need to find similar gay and straight people and similar life activities and then see if the life expectancies vary.

I don’t know about the particulars of that study but the fact is gay people will particiate in much higher risk behaviors then straights.

I think your reasoning is a bit flawed. The study isn’t about how “having the gay gene* makes you more susceptible to early death,” it is trying to point out what you have been observing - being gay causes people to turn to an unhealthy lifestyle which makes you more susceptible to early death.

So you do not want to divide the participants up by lifestyle you want to divide them up by sexual orientation.

I also agree with Annie’s observation about obituaries. How many gay people who were born before 1960 would be advertising it in their obits? How many gay people who were born before 1960 most likely have kids and grandkids, thus making their obituaries seem straight? I know 2 gay guys over 50 and they both have kids and grandkids.

A guy dying in his 40s is tragic. If he committed suicide because he was gay, I would suspect it might be picked up by the gay community. If he dies from AIDS it will also be picked up. Those guys go in the “dead at 40 gay guys” pile. All of the rest are…just old people who died.

*I think I am using hyperbole there, or something.

[Antinor01]

@Markxxx

The fact is you have to compare like to like. As a gay man I can tell you homosexuals lead much more unhealthy lifestyles. I only can think of a couple of gay men who don’t do drugs for example. Go to any gay bar you can see meth everywhere. I can’t see it in straight bars. That doesn’t mean it isn’t in straight bars but if you want drugs go to a gay bar.

You must go to different bars than I do. I do know a number of gay guys that are regular drug users, but I have never seen it at the bars.

One bar I went to many years ago had a lot of cocaine users, but that place was considered an exception.

[Polycarp]

I’ll trot out my own personal example of selection bias (as regards personal experience/anecdotal sampling), because it’s so precisely relevant to the topic under discussion: All the people actively suffering with AIDS whom I’ve ever met knowingly face to face had had sex with only one other person in their life, and that in a committed monogamous relationship. (I.e., of the (two) people I met face to face whom I knew had active AIDS, both had contracted it from their only sex partner, at a time when they were in a monogamous relationship with him (two different 'him’s).

Yes, I’m quite aware of how improbable that is. (It is, however, factual.) No, I don’t draw any bizarre conclusions from it – except this one: Selection bias can give you a very distorted picture of what the reality of human behavior is.

[panache45]

@ZipperJJ

I also agree with Annie’s observation about obituaries. How many gay people who were born before 1960 would be advertising it in their obits? How many gay people who were born before 1960 most likely have kids and grandkids, thus making their obituaries seem straight? I know 2 gay guys over 50 and they both have kids and grandkids.

I have to agree with this. I know quite a few gay men over 50, and I am in a small minority who never married and had kids. Most are grandfathers or great-grandfathers. And some of them are still married.

[susan]

@Polycarp

Yes, I’m quite aware of how improbable that is. (It is, however, factual.) No, I don’t draw any bizarre conclusions from it – except this one: Selection bias can give you a very distorted picture of what the reality of human behavior is.

Great example. Thanks.

[Kimstu]

@Sam Lowry

In a Dutch study, Dutch gay males have a higher rate of depression and bipolar disorder

This probably references Sandfort, Th.G.M., Graaf, R. de, Bijl, R.V., Schnabel, P.: Sexual orientation and psychiatric disorders: Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study NEMESIS. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50(1):85-91, 2001. I couldn’t find a link to the article but the author’s website is here, and a Google search turns up numerous summaries/references concerning it.

@Sam Lowry

He brought up the Dutch study in the sermon because he said that there’s higher rates of suicide and depression in homosexuals and that some people say that the reason that suicide and depression is higher is because it’s not accepted in our society. So he referenced the Dutch study since their society is much more liberal and accepting of homosexuality and homosexuals can even get married there, but they still have a higher rate of depression there.

While Dutch society is much more socially accepting of homosexuality than (most of) US culture, including having legal gay marriage, it’s certainly not homophobia-free. (I’m not Dutch myself, or homosexual for that matter, but I lived in the Netherlands for a couple of years.)

For one thing, note that the legalization of gay marriage in the Netherlands dates back only to 2001, and gay civil unions (“registered partnership”) only to 1998. You would hardly expect a 2001 psychological study of Dutch homosexuals to reflect perceptions of social acceptance equal to those of heterosexuals.

Moreover, there is still plenty of anti-gay prejudice in the Netherlands. Some of it is found among recent immigrants from African and West Asian countries where homosexuality is strongly condemned, and some among conservative/traditional Dutch Christians, especially in rural areas. Over 1500 anti-gay hate crimes were reported in 2008 in the Netherlands. Incidents of gay-bashing by radical Muslim immigrant youths are described as growing in frequency. Attacks on Dutch gays by native Dutch and other westerners are also a significant problem, as in a 2007 incident where two Canadian soldiers beat up a gay man in Amsterdam:

The pair had repeatedly stomped on the victim’s face, fracturing his skull and breaking his nose while shouting anti-gay slurs.

And a recent study of Amsterdam youth suggests that homophobic attitudes are common among immigrant and native Dutch people alike:

The study involved interviewing offenders, reviewing police, parole and court records, talking to at-risk youth and conducting surveys among Amsterdam secondary school pupils. Apparently, tolerance of homosexuality is little more than a thin veneer among relatively large groups of men. The supposed acceptance is paired with intolerance, which fuels discrimination at the expense of a safe environment for homosexuals, concluded researchers Laurens Buijs and Jan Willem Duyvendak.

In short, the higher prevalence of psychological problems among homosexuals in the Netherlands proves absolutely nothing about the inherent unhealthiness of homosexuality. Dutch homosexuals have plenty of problems to deal with, even if not being legally allowed to get married isn’t one of them.