LGB Individuals Living in Anti-Gay Communities Die Younger

Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals who lived in US communities that had high levels of anti-gay prejudice lived, on average, 12 years less than LGB individuals in more tolerant areas.

"Our findings indicate that sexual minorities living in communities with higher levels of prejudice die sooner than sexual minorities living in low-prejudice communities, and that these effects are independent of established risk factors for mortality, including household income, education, gender, ethnicity, and age, as well as the average income and education level of residents in the communities where the respondents lived," said the study's lead author, Mark Hatzenbuehler, assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences. "In fact, our results for prejudice were comparable to life expectancy differences that have been observed between individuals with and without a high school education."

This study was published in Social Science & Medicine by researchers from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Using prejudice attitude data from the General Social Survey, researchers determined the average level of anti-gay prejudice in LGB communities and compared them longitudinally to mortality data for the same communities.

By the end of the study, "92 percent of LGB respondents living in low-prejudice communities were still alive; in contrast, only 78 percent of the LGB respondents living in high-prejudice communities were still alive," according to a press release announcing the findings.

Of the deaths in high-prejudice communities, 25 percent were due to cardiovascular disease, compared to 18.6 percent of deaths in the low-prejudice communities. "Psychosocial stressors are strongly linked to cardiovascular risk, and this kind of stress may represent an indirect pathway through which prejudice contributes to mortality. Discrimination, prejudice, and social marginalization create several unique demands on stigmatized individuals that are stress-inducing," said Hatzenbuehler.

The study's strength lies in the fact that the prejudice measure was calculated using the responses of all participants of the study living in the communities. Other studies have relied on the sexual minorities' perception of anti-gay attitudes in the community.

"Therefore, this approach overcomes many of the limitations of individual-level measures of stigma and prejudice, which have characterized most stigma and health research to date," said Hatzenbuehler.