Studying LesBians: Homophobia is bad for your health

By Natazzz on Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 20:47

Studying LesBians is a monthly column about recent (and not-so-recent) research about lesBians or the LGBT community as a whole. This time I want to talk to you about yet another very surprising and shocking research finding: homophobia is bad for you!

More specifically, several studies have recently linked experiencing homophobic incidents or being in a hostile, homophobic environment to negative health consequences. In other words, these studies are showing that being around homophobia is bad for our health!

This is yet another line of research that makes me go 'DUH!', but I do really appreciate all these researchers taking the time to look into this, because I am sure there are many (homophobic?) people who actually think a little homophobia doesn't do any harm, and they are just 'letting people know what they believe in', or something.

Let's have a closer look at these studies. The study that got the most exposure in the (gay) media the last few weeks was a doctoral thesis in clinical psychology by Michael Benibgui from Concordia University, entitled: 'Mental Health Challenges and Resilience in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults: Biological and Psychological Internalization of Minority Stress and Victimization'.

In his thesis, Benibgui looked into psycho-social and neuroendocrine factors that may contribute to mental health in LGB youth and young adults. In other words, he followed a number of young LGB people and looked at what kind of environment they were in and what kind of experiences they have had and he also assessed what their mental and physical health was like.

The reason for this research was that it is often found that LGB youth experience more depression, anxiety and have higher suicide rates (although let's not forget some studies have actually shown LGB youth are just like everybody else), but not much is known about exactly why this is. Therefore, Benibgui examined a number of environmental risks and protective factors that he tried to link to (mental) health outcomes.

And guess what he found? Those LGB teens who lived in a homophobic environment - that is to say, who had a lot of arguments about their sexual identity, who were bullied or discriminated against - had higher levels of internalized homophobia and an increased production of cortisol, a stress hormone. In turn, internalized homophobia and high levels of cortisol were connected to things like depression and suicidal thoughts.

In other words, being in an environment that makes you feel bad about yourself, makes you feel bad about yourself! It is interesting though, to see what kind of influence the environment can have on the body and consequently one's mental state.