LGBT Drug Treatment Blog

Depression, sex addiction linked in gay men: report (Gay)
Gay experts call for honest dialogue on touchy subjects

By RYAN LEE
Friday, September 15, 2006

Mental health issues were long viewed as either/or: someone either was, or wasn’t depressed.

But in recent years, mental health experts have paid more attention to the various gradations of depression, and some gay health advocates say it’s time people recognized how even moderate levels of depression can significantly impact behavior.

A new report compiled by the Medius Institute for Gay Men’s Health — a small, New York-based organization founded in June 2005 — suggests that because gay men have higher rates of depression than the general population, they also are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior associated with depression, including unsafe sex and drug use.

“It would be an oversimplification to say that depression ‘causes’ the risky behavior,” according to the report, “Living on the Edge: Gay Men, Depression & Risk-Taking,” written by Spencer Cox, Medius founder and executive director.

“Instead, it appears that in gay men, multiple epidemics — such as depression, drug abuse, violence, childhood sexual abuse and HIV — interact to increase risk for one another,” Cox wrote.

Depression — along with milder mood disorders like dysthymia — should not be viewed as the latest “crisis-of-the-month” for gay men, but rather as “a background risk modulator” that subconsciously influences a range of behaviors, Cox said.

Cox compiled the Medius report by searching medical databases for already-existing studies on depression among gay men and other populations, as well as through interviews with mental health and sex researchers and service providers.

Cox estimated that he reviewed and analyzed about 300 different studies, from sources as varied as the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and National Institutes of Health, to the Gay Urban Men’s Health Study.

Among the previous findings Cox highlighted in his overview was that gay men were more likely than heterosexual men and lesbians to experience depression, and that depression in younger gay men was associated with increases in risk-taking behavior, such as not wearing a condom.

“What makes the gay experience [with depression] unique is the high levels of depression — roughly one-in-five gay men experience depressive symptoms,” said Cox, noting that the rate for the general population is less than half of that. “So, it’s like everything is louder for us, everything is bigger when we’re talking about depression and mental illness in gay men.”

The result of that amplification, according to Cox, is a culture where scores of gay men engage in drug use and high-risk sexual behavior to cope with unseen depression, oblivious to the toll their self-destructive habits are taking on their well being.

“The normalization of a lot of those things makes it very hard to see what’s happening — everybody you know is doing a bump of cocaine on the dance floor, so go ahead,” Cox said. “I do think it’s very hard for people to say, ‘I’m very confused, and I need help.’

“We need to make it OK to say, ‘You need help, get help,’” he added.