Understanding Drug Use, Trauma and Demographics of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (LGB) persons in the United States
Background Substance abuse is a major public health crisis in the United States and one that in particular facing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ+) community. There is significant documentation of higher rates of substance abuse issues among LGBTIQ+ persons compared to cisgender heterosexual persons although little quantitative research has been conducted within this sub-population to understand factors that impact drug abuse.
Methods To assess drug use among LGB persons in the United States, this paper uses secondary data analysis from the Generations’ Study, a US population-based survey focused on LGB adults. The study assesses which demographic factors and childhood induced traumas may impact drug abuse for LGB populations across three age cohorts. To assess this, we used the drug use related questions from the Generations survey for our dependent variable and a range of demographic indicators and questions related to Adverse Childhood Effects as our independent variables.
Results Our findings suggest interesting perspectives to add to the nascent literature of specific factors affecting drug use among LGB adults. This study uses descriptive statistics along with multivariate logistic regression to assesses odds ratio of our covariates against our dependent variable of drug abuse. Our statistically significant covariates for this study using logistic regression include all categories of cohort (age groups), gender, and sexual orientation. Bisexuals were 2.3 times the odds of being drug dependent and other sexual minorities were 3.48 times the odds compared with our base group of gay or lesbian persons. Sexual orientation: race covariate for bisexual and black was significant at the 10% level along with bullying for 3 of the levels, and for those who experienced sexual abuse as a child.
Conclusion This research is one of the first to look at in-group risk factors for drug abuse issues of LGB adults contributing to a new literature to help shed light on who within the LGB groups are most at risk for developing drug abuse problems and suffering from drug dependency as an adult. This paper finds that women, non-binary, and bisexuals are most at risk of developing drug dependence within this group. It also confirms that similar to the general population, those who experience bullying and sexual abuse have higher odds of developing a substance abuse problem.
