Each week HuffPost Gay Voices, in a partnership with bloggers Liz Margolies and Scout, brings you a round up of some of the biggest LGBT wellness stories from the past seven days. For more LGBT Wellness, visit our page dedicated to the topic here.
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The Kids Are More Than Alright
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The world’s largest study on same sex parenting find that the kids are doing much more than alright, as it relates to their peers. The Australian study found that the children had higher scores on measures of general behavior, general health and family cohesion compared to heterosexual families. Dr. Simon Crouch believes that an emphasis on skills, as opposed to traditional gender roles, accounted for the survey's results.
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PREJUDICE=DEATH
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The first study of its kind looking at the link between anti-gay prejudice and its effect on mortality, has found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals who live in communities with high levels of anti-gay prejudice have a 12 year shorter life expectancy than their peers who live in the least prejudiced communities. The study found that suicide, homicide/violence, and cardiovascular diseases were all substantially higher among LGB people in the high-prejudice communities.
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PAPA DON’T PREACH
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Researchers from University of Michigan have published a report that examines young gay and bisexual men’s experiences coming out to their fathers; ranging from “enthusiastic acceptance to physical violence” in their fathers responses, these young men discussed what they perceived as influencing their fathers, including religion, politics, gender norm, HIV and the cause of same-sex attraction. Meanwhile, this story from Chicago illustrates the increase in family support for their LGBT youth.
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WHO Says I’m Not Crazy!
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A lot has changed since 1990, the year the World Health Organization released the last version of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Human Problems (ICD-10). The working group assigned to review the diagnoses based primarily on sexual orientation for the ICD-11, due out in 2017, recommended that that those categories be removed entirely; they are not merely useless, but harmful.
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ANOTHER WAY WE’RE POLY
Shutterstock / ChameleonsEye
Analyzing data from the 2011 Missouri Youth Tobacco Survey, University of Missouri researchers found that LGBT teens started smoking slightly later, but at almost four times the rate of the general teen population in MO, and also tended to be poly-tobacco users (using multiple kinds of tobacco products). All the work being done to reduce smoking rates in the LGBT community from CDC, state governments and LGBT groups is reviewed in this article.
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