Psychosomatische Folgen und Begleitphänomene der Diskriminierung am Arbeitsplatz bei homosexuellen Menschen

Abstract

Objective: Despite an increased tolerance towards people with homosexual orientation they are still being discriminated in their everyday life, especially at work. Somehow they have to cope with this constant emotional and cognitive pressure, otherwise distress will lead to illness. It is the goal of this study to show and differentiate the medical consequences of the distress linked to that emotional and cognitive pressure. Men and women of homosexual orientation were questioned. Method: The inquiry was done with a questionnaire including the following items: personal data, work environment, coming-out history, social environment, partnership and illness. Out of 2450 questionnaires 880 were returned and answered correctly. The studied population consists in men and women who are member of a political or emancipating organisation and live in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. To study the differences found in the whole group the within-group method was chosen. Out of the 880 people two subgroups were formed regarding discrimination, namely those who are highly discriminated (HD; n = 93) and those who are not discriminated (ND; n = 319). This discrimination score was the basis for further analysis. The score was created out of questions regarding social events, subjective discrimination, professional disadvantage and dismissal. Differences between women and men could not be found. ANOVA (analysis of variance) was used to examine the correlations and differences between the two subgroups. The relevant data could be found in the items work environment and illness. Results: Analysing all questions which are correlated with discrimination at work it appeared that 65.3% (women: 65.6%; men: 65.2%; n.s.) of all the participants had already discriminatory experiences. 16.6% were highly discriminated. Discrimination at work consists of verbal aggression, mobbing and open aggression. Regarding the motivation at work and the quality of relationship between colleagues there are significant differences. The highly discriminated are more likely to express the wish for changing their place of work or their job. In the two subgroups the psychic syndromes differ significantly, for example in sleeping irregularities (ND: 20.7%; HD: 38.7%; p <0.001), fears (ND: 20.4%; HD: 44.1%; p <0.001) and depressive symptoms (HD: 49.5%; ND: 12.2%; p <0.001). Also the somatic disturbances show significant differences in gastrointestinal (HD: 30.4%; ND: 9.9%; p <0.001) and chronic rheumatic diseases (HD: 32.6%; ND: 14.5%; p <0.001). Conclusion: There still exists discrimination at work against people with homosexual orientation in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. This study examined a population that is to some extent active in a political or emancipating group. It is therefore possible to compare the results with former studies. The increased incidence of illness in discriminated people confirms those results. The fact that people being discriminated suffer more from illness can lead to the supposition that there might be a correlation and a causal coherence between discrimination and the increased incidence of somatic and psychiatric symptoms in the highly discriminated population. Further investigations are needed to demonstrate this correlation more clearly.