Increased Health Risks For LGBT Youth

According to a just-released study, LGBT youth tend to take greater risks with their health than do their heterosexual counterparts.

High school students who identify as being gay, lesbian, or bisexual are more likely than heterosexual students to smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs, and take part in violent and suicidal behaviors, a CDC survey shows. CDC researchers analyzed survey results from about 156,000 high school students. "This report should be a wake-up call for families, schools, and communities that we need to do a much better job of supporting these young people," Howard Wechsler, EdD, MPH, of the CDC, says in a news release. "Any effort to promote adolescent health and safety must take into account the additional stressors these youth experience because of their sexual orientation, such as stigma, discrimination and victimization."

Anti-gay groups will, of course, leap upon this latest study without noting their own complicity in the "stigma, discrimination and victimization" noted above.