Same-sex marriage bans may be harmful to the mental health of gay people in those states. That is the conclusion of a new study published in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Deborah Hasin, professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues conducted their research by analyzing data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions ( NESARC ) , a project of the National Institutes of Health.
NESARC is a nationally representative study that interviewed the same group of non-institutionalized U.S. adults in both 20012002 and 2004-2005. Hasin and her team used the NESARC data to determine whether lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals living in the 14 states that instituted same-sex marriage bans in or just after the 2004-2005 elections had increased rates of psychiatric disorders as a result of the discriminatory policies. The researchers controlled for age, gender, race, ethnicity, income, educational attainment, marital status and region.
Few previous studies had looked at the mental-health effect of laws that deprive LGB people of rights. One prior study on the subject came to similar conclusions, but the current study stands out for using a large, nationally representative sample and for looking at the participants over a period of time.
Hasin said their study could be useful in legal cases that seek to overturn anti-gay laws.
"It is probably among the best types of evidence that you're going to get," she asserted, "because it is national and it does allow you to look closely at this."
Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel and marriage project director for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, agreed that studies like this "are exceedingly useful and often critical for the work we do and for public health purposes."
"It is immensely helpful to have top academic researchers quantifying and confirming these serious deleterious effects," she said. Lawyers, she said, "don't have the skills to be describing and measuring these effects as experts." She and her colleagues, however, often give policy recommendations to legislatures and, in doing so, "We have to establish the need. We have to show the nature of the harm we have to stop."
As for Hasin's study, Pizer said, "Their finding is not a new scientific conclusion, but they have employed a methodology that will give it greater weight and context…. The focus on the harmful health effect of anti-gay ballot measures is timely and will have a positive impact."
Read more about the specifics of the study as well as some of Hasin's recommendations to rectify the problem online at www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com .