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Mental health and help-seeking in Czech sexual minorities: a nationally representative cross-sectional study
- Michal Pitoňák, Libor Potočár, Tomáš Formánek
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- Journal:
- Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences / Volume 33 / 2024
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 March 2024, e16
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- Article
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- You have access Access
- Open access
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Aims
The mental health of sexual minority (SM) individuals remains overlooked and understudied in Czechia. We aimed to estimate (1) the prevalence rate and (2) the relative risk of common mental disorders and (3) the mental distress severity among the Czech SM people compared with the heterosexual population. In addition, we aimed to investigate help-seeking for mental disorders in SM people.
MethodsWe used data from a cross-sectional, nationally representative survey of Czech community-dwelling adults, consisting of 3063 respondents (response rate = 58.62%). We used the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview to assess the presence of mental disorders. In individuals scoring positively, we established help-seeking in the past 12 months. We assessed symptom severity using the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire and the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale. We computed the prevalence of mental disorders and the treatment gap with 95% confidence intervals. To assess the risk of having a mental disorder, we used binary logistic regression.
ResultsWe demonstrated that the prevalence of current mental disorders was 18.85% (17.43–20.28), 52.27% (36.91–67.63), 33.33% (19.5–47.17) and 25.93% (13.85–38) in heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual and more sexually diverse individuals, respectively. Suicidal thoughts and behaviours were present in 5.73% (4.88–6.57), 25.00% (11.68–38.32), 22.92% (10.58–35.25) and 11.11% (2.45–19.77) of heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual and more sexually diverse individuals, respectively. After confounder adjustment, gay or lesbian individuals were more likely to have at least one current mental disorder compared with heterosexual counterparts (odds ratio = 3.51; 1.83–6.76). For bisexual and sexually more diverse individuals, the results were consistent with a null effect (1.85; 0.96–3.45 and 0.89; 0.42–1.73). The mean depression symptom severity was 2.96 (2.81–3.11) in heterosexual people and 4.68 (2.95–6.42), 7.12 (5.07–9.18) and 5.17 (3.38–6.95) in gay or lesbian, bisexual and more sexually diverse individuals, respectively. The mean anxiety symptom severity was 1.97 (1.85–2.08) in heterosexual people and 3.5 (1.98–5.02), 4.63 (3.05–6.2) and 3.7 (2.29–5.11) in gay or lesbian, bisexual and more sexually diverse individuals, respectively. We demonstrated broadly consistent levels of treatment gap in heterosexual and SM individuals scoring positively for at least one current mental disorder (82.91%; 79.5–85.96 vs. 81.13%; 68.03–90.56).
ConclusionsWe provide evidence that SM people in Czechia have substantially worse mental health outcomes than their heterosexual counterparts. Systemic changes are imperative to provide not only better and more sensitive care to SM individuals but also to address structural stigma contributing to these health disparities.
5 - LGBT+ Activism and Morality Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Understanding the Dynamic Equilibrium in Czechia from a Broader Transnational Perspective
- Edited by Kate Boyer, Cardiff University, LaToya E. Eaves, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Jennifer Fluri, University of Colorado Boulder
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- Book:
- Activist Feminist Geographies
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 24 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 31 July 2023, pp 94-119
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Summary
It was during the time of first writing of this chapter when I lost my father. I stay forever grateful for his support and unconditional love.
A note on my positionality
This research is part of my independent work. In 2015 I defended my PhD thesis in the field of human geography and became the first human geographer to focus on the field of geographies of sexualities in Czechia. Although I have not been the first to attempt to introduce feminist thought into Czech(oslovak) geographical thinking (Blažek and Rochovská, 2006; Matejsková, 2007) these approaches have, so far, remained far from accepted by the ‘mainstream’ geographers and have a long way to go before they become established within local geographical academia. Issues related to sexual and gender minorities are, so far, mostly regarded as peripheral within Czech (Osman and Pospíšilová, 2019) as well as other Central and Eastern European geographical academia which resists feminist and queer scholarly approaches (Timár and Fekete, 2010). I have discussed this lasting disciplinary resistance toward feminist and queer thought in detail elsewhere (Pitoňák, 2019; Pitoňák and Klingorová, 2019).
Many researchers who focus on this field in the region of Central and Eastern Europe often lack institutional support and continue with their work as independent researchers or seek scholarly opportunities abroad. Some of us work in other disciplines or earn their living by working in different jobs. For me, this chapter is a result of my independent and lasting interest in contributing to the field of geographies of sexualities, informed by queer and feminist perspectives. To be able to focus on this task, I have worked in my free time, sacrificed time that I could otherwise spend with my life-partner, my family, or friends. Sometimes I had to take a vacation to be able to write or reschedule my paid-work activities and other research project duties. Oftentimes I had pondered introspectively about my lasting motivations and questioned my involvement. Yet, I remain hopeful that this work will contribute to the large field of sexuality and gender studies in geography. In a way I feel that scholarly work in this area relates to some sort of responsibility and fits into a web of both formal and informal scholarly interactions that simultaneously receive support and give it to others.