LGBTQ+ Health Awareness

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that it is LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week? Maybe you think about the recent political climate and how basic healthcare rights have been under attack, maybe you think about the great strides being made from medical providers who offer gender-affirming care for trans and gender non-conforming individuals, maybe you think about the strong presence of hookup culture within the community and the importance of proper sexual health through testing and preventative measures, maybe you consider the high prevalence of mental health issues, substance use issues, and suicide rates within this community. There is a lot to consider when it comes to LGBTQ+ health awareness, so any and all of the answers above could be correct. 

HISTORY

This year marks the 23rd year of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week established by the National Coalition for LGBTQ+ Health. LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week was established by this organization to call attention to the diverse and expansive healthcare needs within the LGBTQ+ community and the coalition is not just made of LGBTQ+ individuals, but also advocates, allies, and healthcare professionals. Healthcare is a vast subject that encompasses not only physical needs, but mental, emotional, and even spiritual needs. Treating the person as a whole ensures that their needs are being met and each component of healthcare can have a drastic impact on the other parts if left unmanaged. 

WHY DO WE NEED LGBTQ+ HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK?

Health care is of course important for everyone, but unfortunately it is true that both physical and mental health issues are seen at higher rates in queer people than in cisgender and heterosexual people. 4.5% of the United States identifies as LGBTQ+ and 39% of these people have reported suffering from mental illness within the past year, but how many people does this come out to be? 4.5% doesn’t seem like a huge number, but to have a little over one third of this percentage suffering from a mental illness within the past year means that 5.8 million LGBTQ+ Americans are dealing with mental health struggles. Queer people are also six times as likely to experience depression at some point in their lives compared to cisgender and heterosexual people. For substance use too, 20-30% of the LGBTQ+ community is affected by harmful substance use compared to 9% of cisgender and heterosexual people. 

In discussing physical health issues for people in the LGBTQ+ community, it is important to note that stress is a factor that can increase the risk for many chronic health conditions. This is because we are not meant to have increased levels of stress hormones, they are only meant to assist during times of distress. Having excess stress hormones can cause what’s called allostatic overload which is the point at which the cumulative wear and tear on the body, mind, and emotions caused by chronic stress exceeds an individual's capacity to cope, leading to health problems and disease. What diseases and health problems are exaggerated by being in allostatic overload? Aside from an increase in mental health issues as seen above, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cognitive decline, migraines, and sleep disturbances are just some of the other issues that can arise from the increased and prolonged biological stress response. 

WHY INCREASED STRESS?

It’s no shock to anyone that LGBTQ+ people do in fact have more stressors than the average cisgender/heterosexual person. They have to worry about being accepted by loved ones, employers, teachers, neighbors, landlords, friends, coworkers, service providers, doctors, nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, and really by everyone in society who they may come into contact with, because if they aren’t being accepted the best case is a neutral response and the worst case would be experiencing discrimination, microaggressions, and persecution for their gender identity and/or sexual orientation. It can be exhausting to switch between feeling like you have to hide important pieces of yourself or share these important pieces of yourself with others and risk being judged or not accepted for who you are. This constant fear and exhaustion puts so much pressure on queer individuals and the numerous discriminatory laws being passed on both state and federal levels are not helping to ease these stressors either. With gender affirming healthcare being under attack, queer and gender non-conforming individuals are consistently feeling like they have no place to go to be understood by their medical providers. Queer people are also more likely to experience higher poverty rates than their cisgender/heterosexual counterparts which directly impacts healthcare accessibility and the ability to purchase health insurance or pay for procedures/routine checkups out of pocket. And, of course, the higher poverty rates, higher discrimination rates, being attacked by legislature, the fear of being accepted, and all the other struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community compile and make it so that the statistics listed above are not only correct, they also tend to rise as more research becomes available, making this a systematic problem. 

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO HELP?

There are so many negatives associated with LGBTQ+ access to healthcare, and while it’s not necessarily wrong, it’s not right that it seems to take over the positive aspects either. Great strides have been made in gender affirming care that shouldn’t be ignored. Trans surgical procedures and hormone replacement therapy continue to be improved upon to be made safer and more affirming for trans individuals. Even though queer individuals have higher rates of mental health concerns, they’re also much more likely to utilize any available resources to be able to pursue therapy and then utilize the therapeutic skills they’ve learned to help manage their mental health. Queer joy is also something that gets overlooked in all the negativity. Queer joy is beautiful and can be fostered by building community through sharing resources, knowledge, and quality time together with people in the community… but also with allies of the community to help impose systematic change, a few people at a time. 

It’s horribly daunting to try and fix a systematic problem, but what we are all capable of is sharing resources to help each other and ultimately, better education is what the most powerful tool is. Ideally, physical and mental health service providers would be able to attend more training on working with LGBTQ+ clients and patients in order to fight against the great levels of discrimination people of this community face in a healthcare setting. It would also be helpful for medical professionals to be allowed to take a more active role in treating their patients instead of most of the treatment being at the will of insurance companies run by people without medical training. Finally, having educational events for all members of society to attend to learn more about LGBTQ+ health because this just isn’t a topic that many people know about. The more we’re able to spread awareness, the better this issue can be helped and hopefully resolved.