Lesbian women die 20 percent younger than straight women due to stress of ‘toxic’ social stigma, according to new study
A lifetime of social stigma leads to chronic stress that dramatically shortens the lives of lesbian and bisexual women, a new study shows.
Research from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute has shown that bisexual women die on average almost 40 percent younger than heterosexual women, while lesbian women die 20 percent earlier.
The difference in mortality may be due to the “toxic social forces” LGBTQ people face, which “can result in chronic stress and unhealthy coping mechanisms,” says lead author Dr. Sarah McKetta, Research Fellow at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
The study’s results, one of the largest disparities in mortality among people with different sexual orientations, are “disturbing,” senior author Brittany Charlton added.
The researchers found that bisexual women had the shortest life expectancy and died 37 percent earlier than heterosexual women, followed by lesbian women, who died 20 percent earlier. Queer women (including both bisexual and lesbian women) died on average 26 percent earlier than straight women
An estimated 5.6 percent of all Americans identified as LGBTQ in 2020
The researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, a cohort of more than 100,000 female nurses born between 1945 and 1964 and studied since 1989.
Participants were eligible if they were alive in 1995, when sexual orientation was first included as part of the study.
The Harvard researchers linked the participants’ self-reported sexual orientation to nearly 30 years of death certificates.
They found that bisexual women had the shortest life expectancy and died 37 percent earlier than heterosexual women, followed by lesbian women, who died 20 percent earlier.
Sexual minority women died on average 26 percent earlier than straight women.
“Bisexual women face several stressors from outside, but also within the LGBTQ community, that are rooted in biphobia.
“Additionally, bisexual people are often excluded from various communities because they are assumed to be straight or gay based on the gender of their partner,” said Ms. Charlton, an associate professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
This exclusion could manifest itself in a lack of social support.
The US surgeon general previously said that social isolation is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and that loneliness should be treated with the same urgency as “tobacco use, obesity and the addiction crisis.”
Lonely people have up to 30 percent more risk of heart disease, according to previous research.
Previous research has also shown that gay women are not screened for diseases as often as they should be.
a Australian research from 2016 found that only 65 percent of lesbian women had ever undergone cervical cancer screening, compared to 71 percent of bisexual women and 79 percent of gay women.
This is due to an “urban myth” that lesbian women don’t need the screenings because they don’t have sex with men, the study said.
The Harvard researchers suggested increasing screening and treatment referrals for tobacco, alcohol, and other substance use, and mandatory, culturally informed training for health care providers who care for sexual minority patients.
While the findings, published in the journal JAMA“stand out in itself,” Dr. McKetta pointed out that there may be even greater disparities among the general public.
Participants were nurses who are likely to be more aware of their health and have better access to healthcare.
“The study participants were all nurses and therefore have many protective factors that the general population does not have,” says Dr. McKetta.