The Comparison of the Quality of Life and Mental Health in Homosexual Men and Heterosexual Men

Kong, Seong Uk; Oh, Kang Seob; No, Kyung Sun

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
The study was performed to compare the quality of life and mental health -depression, suicide etc- in homosexual men with those in heterosexual men and to identify how the quality of life is related with mental health.
METHODS
129 homosexual men and 114 heterosexual men in twenties and thirties were enrolled by crosssectional method. Quality of life, depression, suicidal idea, hopelessness, self esteem, coping strategy, social support, social conflict, familiar adaptability and familiar cohesion were measured by self-report scale to compare the homosexual and the heterosexual groups.
RESULTS
The results showed that age, educational level, income, alcohol intake, smoking and reli-gion were not significantly different between homosexual group and heterosexual group. Teased experience about feminity, past psychiatric history, HIV test experience in homosexual group were higher than those in heterosexual group. The self- esteem, hopelessness, coping strategy, familiar ada-ptability and social support-conflict were not significantly different between two groups. Homosexual group had poorer quality of life, lower familiar cohesion, higher depression and higher suicidal idea than heterosexual group. Being alienated from home, social system and interpersonal relationship, which are subscales of the quality of life, scored lower by homosexual group as compared with hete-rosexual group. Therefore, high depression and low familiar cohesion had significant effect on the quality of life in homosexual group.
CONCLUSION
Although homosexuality is excluded from DSM, the prevalences of many mental health problems are higher in homosexual group than heterosexual group. It is suggested that the more studies on depression and familiar function related to homosexuality are needed.