Mental Health Disorders, Psychological Distress, and Suicidality in a Diverse Sample of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youths

Objectives We examined associations of race/ethnicity gender and sexual orientation with mental disorders among lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youths Methods We assessed mental disorders by administering a structured diagnostic interview to a community sample of 246 LGBT youths aged 16 to 20 years Participants also completed the Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (BSI 18) Results One third of participants met criteria for any mental disorder 17% for conduct disorder 15% for major depression and 9% for posttraumatic stress disorder Anorexia and bulimia were rare Lifetime suicide attempts were frequent (31%) but less so in the prior 12 months (7%) Few racial/ethnic and gender differences were statistically significant Bisexually identified youths had lower prevalences of every diagnosis The BSI 18 had high negative predictive power (90%) and low positive predictive power (25%) for major depression Conclusions LGBT youths had higher prevalences of mental disorder diagnoses than youths in national samples but were similar to representative samples of urban racial/ethnic minority youths Suicide behaviors were similar to those among representative youth samples in the same geographic area Questionnaires measuring psychological distress may overestimate depression prevalence among this population (Am J Public Health 2010 100 2426-2432 doi 10.2105/AJPH.2009.178319)