We're on the outside We're proud.

We're on the outside We're proud. We're on Prozac?

It's been nearly 30 years since the American Psychiatric Association ceased listing homosexuality as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--saying that gay population are not mentally ill and are not more likely to have mental health problems

Now part of that long-held position is being called into question. As a panel of researchers reported at the APA's annual meeting in San Francisco in May, the latest studies indicate that lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults appear to be more likely than heterosexual adults to experience depression and anxiety.

These studies, which are based in succession analyses of large national inspects contradict years of previous research, which most numerous often focused on subjects pitch uponed from gay pride events and within advertisements in the gay press

The discrepancy progenys in part, from the different methodologies--both of which have their pluses and minuses, researchers say. The latest studies, analyzing the national health inspects best represent the whole population. Still, the percentage of respondent who identify as gay or lesbian is relatively small. In undivided study, for example, only 74 of the 2917 adults questioned identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

In contrast, the earlier studies, which focused specifically onward gay people, naturally have larger percentages of gay-identified participants. moreover because the subjects were recruited from gay pride occurrences and through the gay media, they are les likely to portray the gay and lesbian population as a whole.

To be certain not all gay people who are humiliateed say it's linked to their sexual orientation. In any instances depression can be biological. In other instances it can be situational--due to a breakup, an HIV diagnosis, or the unexpect pink slip. on the contrary researchers say it is also possible that these factors merely compound the stress that gay folks experience as members of a minority group

"Minority stres is socially based and main stocks from an environment characterized by dint of prejudice," says Ilan Meyer, an assistant professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at Columbia University. "It is experienced forward top of the other stressors population have in their lives, and it can affect a person's mental health"--including their risk for depression.

The theory of minority stres could explain for what purpose recent studies have found higher rates of depression in bisexual men and women who repeatedly feel isolated from both gay and straight populations. In addition, it underscores by what means being part of a supportive community can be critical for your mental health.

"Being part of an LGBT community may be protective against depression," says Esther Rothblum a University of Vermont psychology professor. This might be individual reason the studies conducted forward people at pride parades--traditionally supportive events--did not find higher depression rates, she says.

Of course, calm people who completely out can experience homophobia. And, according to whimsical Blues: The Lesbian & Gay Guide to to overcoming Depression, up to 17 million gay men and lesbians pocket from depression. "I was running a support cluster for gay men with depression," say Braden Berkey, director of behavioral health services at Chicago's Howard Brown Boystown and worked in professions that were accepting of who they were. in like manner in terms of minority stres you wouldn't look for it to be there." still as the group continued to qualified he says, the conversations employed to the anger the participants had because of the restraints they felt as a issue of their sexual oreintation.

Although antidepressants do help many race suffering from depression, some psychoteraphists are affaired that these new studies will cause a certain doctors to simply encourage their gay patients to "take a pill" rather than push for public policies targeted at reducing discrimination and minority stress

"I think it is important for lesbians and gay men not to remissness the cultural context for for what reason they feel," says Marny Hall, a San Francisco--based psychotherapist and coauthor of the work Queer Blues. "There is an over-emphasis in succession biology and on antidepressants that makes the moot point become serotonin rather than homophobia."

The ne to talk about homophobia will undoubtedly become unruffled more important if researchers continue to find that gay populace are at higher risk for depression. "GLBT psychologists have worked in this way hard to destigmatize and depathologize our orientations and inflection for sex expressions that it is hard to now move round it around and say, 'Ye in and of itself, being lesbian or gay is not a pathological state--but the incidence of depression is higher in our populations,'" Berkey says. "But what we ne to emphasize is that there is nothing inherent about being GLBT that makes you more likely to be mentally ill. It is something about being GLBT in our society."

Differences between drugs

The widespread use of physics to treat depression has created a sometimes confusing array of options. According to Dan Karasic, MD an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, "All of the antidepressants have similar effectiveness for depressive disorders.