Abstract
About 3.5% Americans identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual while 0.3% identify themselves as transgender. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community belongs to almost every race, ethnicity, religion, age, and socioeconomic group. The LGBT youth are at a higher risk for substance use, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), cancers, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, bullying, isolation, rejection, anxiety, depression, and suicide as compared to the general population. LGBT youth receive poor quality of care due to stigma, lack of healthcare providers’ awareness, and insensitivity to the unique needs of this community. The main objective of this literature review is to highlight the challenges faced by the LGBT youth and to enhance the awareness among physicians about the existing disparities in order to provide a more comprehensive, evidence-based, and humane medical care to this community.
Highlights
BackgroundLesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) is an umbrella term which includes a number of groups: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, allies, two spirits, and pansexual.It is noteworthy to mention that the lack of appropriate questions pertaining to gender and sexual identity in most national or state surveys makes it difficult to estimate the number of LGBT individuals and their health care needs
About 3.5% Americans identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual while 0.3% identify themselves as transgender
The LGBT community belongs to almost every race, ethnicity, religion, age, and socioeconomic group
Summary
Gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) is an umbrella term which includes a number of groups: lesbian (homosexual woman), gay (homosexual man or woman), bisexual (person who is attracted to both genders), transgender (person who identifies his gender as different from their biological one), queer (a synonym for gay; some people prefer to identify themselves as queer to empower themselves and take their identity “back from the bullies”), questioning (people who are unsure about their gender identity/sexuality), intersex (people with two sets of genitalia), asexual (people who are not sexually attracted to anyone and who don’t identify with any orientation), allies (the loving supporters of the community, though not necessarily part of it), two spirits (a tradition in many First Nations that considers sexual minorities to have both male and female spirits), and pansexual (person sexually attracted to others of any sex or gender). The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) in 2016 showed that 34% of LGBT teens were bullied in school, 18% stated having forced sex, 23% were the victim of sexual violence, and 18% struggled with physical violence [15]. LGBT youth have an increased risk of poor physical mental health outcomes than heterosexual adolescents [24] They face enormous difficulty blending into the LGBT community once they recognize their gender and sexual identity. Another study used purposive sampling to recruit nine women between the ages of 18 and 24 years who identified themselves as belonging to a sexual minority student group at a university in the Southwestern United States Their audio interviews showed that the disclosure of sexual orientation and provider’s attitude were important influencing factors that negatively affected their experiences about health care delivery [31]. It can influence the quality of care and appropriate delivery of health care
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