Minister for Health, Mary Harney this morning launched a report on a major study entitled Supporting LGBT Lives: A Study of the Mental Health and Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People . You may remember the survey phase of the project and my post about it in late 2007. The reports authors, Paula Mayock, Audrey Bryan, Nicola Carr and Karl Kitching are from TCD and UCD.

From my first perusal they have done a very comprehensive job on interpreting the data from online surveys and in person interviews. You can read the report here and the press release here.

o 80% of online respondents had been verbally abused because of their LGBT identity
o 40% were threatened with physical violence
o 25% had been punched, kicked or beaten
o 58% reported the existence of homophobic bullying in their schools
o Over half had been called abusive names related to their sexual orientation or gender identity by fellow students
o 40% had been verbally threatened by fellow students
o 25% of the overall sample had been physically threatened by their school peers
o 20% missed or skipped school because they felt threatened or were afraid of getting hurt at school
o 34% reported homophobic comments by teachers or other staff members
o A quarter of those who had ever worked had been called abusive names related to their sexual orientation or gender identity with 15% being verbally threatened and 7% physically threatened by work colleagues

I will be interested to examine the differences if any they found in the experiences of women and men in terms of coming out, use of services and experiencing difficulties with their Mental Health.

The research was commissioned by GLEN and Belongto and was funded by the National Office of Suicide Prevention (HSE)