Gay and bisexual men may be uncommonly prone to compulsive gambling, a small study has observed, adding to growing evidence linking homosexuality to various impulse-control disorders and other mental illnesses.

The findings require confirmation by future studies, scientists say, but for now they underscore concerns that gay people might require special attention and therapys for a range of mental disorders. The results could also fuel a debate over whether these conditions stem from homosexuality itself, or rather from the stress created by anti-gay discrimination.

"Gay and bisexual male pathologic gamblers may require more intensive or specialized therapy" than other ones, wrote the authors of the study, which appeared in the November-recent issue of the research journal Comprehensive Psychiatry.

These therapies may also "need to address a wide range of impulsive behaviors," added the researchers, Jon Grant of the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, Minn., and Marc Potenza of Yale University Medical School in New Haven, Conn.

Compulsive or pathological gambling is habitual, excessive gambling with severe personal, social or legal consequences. A brain disease, it seems similar to disorders such as alcoholism and drug addiction, as per the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

These illnesses tend to involve problems with a brain region linked to behaviors such as eating and sex, sometimes called the "pleasure center," and strongly reliant on a chemical messenger called dopamine. Pathological gamblers, who are predominantly men, often say they're looking for "action" or excitement.

Grant and Potenza studied 105 men who had sought therapy for pathological gambling and had responded to ads or referrals to participate in the research. Twenty-two of these men-21 percent-identified themselves as gay or bisexual, they found. That's four to seven higher than most middling estimates of the percentage of gays populationwide.

The gays and bisexuals also tended to be more severely addicted, the scientists found; these patients were also likelier to suffer additional impulse-control or substance-abuse conditions, and to be single.

Limitations of the study, the researchers said, are the small size and its inclusion of only therapy-seeking men, who might be unrepresentative of the wider population.

The findings are part of a growing trend, though.

There's a "growing concern that homosexually active individuals are at increased risk for psychiatric morbidity," or illness, wrote scientists in the June 2001 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. "Several surveys have found elevated rates of some anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and substance use disorders among homosexuals."

The reasons are unclear, wrote the authors, with Harvard Medical School in Boston and other institutions. One possibility, they added, is that gays and lesbians are more frequent victims of early-life abuse.

A second, they continued, is that "lesbians and gay men simply lead riskier lives."

Yet another explanation, for which they cited considerably more evidence, was that "stigmatization and exposure to discriminatory behavior lead to higher rates of mental disorders. This hypothesis is consistent with the finding that lesbians and gay men experience discrimination in multiple domains of life" and that such discrimination is tied to psychologic distress. Other disadvantaged groups also face higher-than-average risk for psychological problems, they wrote.

The latter two explanations in particular are associated with deeply, even bitterly opposed world views. The idea that unhealthy risk-taking is inherent in homosexuality tends to satisfy opponents of gay rights, who tend to view same-sex orientation as abnormal. The notion that psychiatric disorders flow from stigmatization is more pleasing to gay-rights supporters, who view discrimination, not homosexuality, as the problem.

The question of what explains the statistics on gays and impulse-control disorders is "the big one," wrote Grant in an email. "I don't think there's either an easy answer or, based on our limited scientific knowledge currently, an answer that doesn't have some sort of sociopolitical overtones. I think of this research as a very small piece of the bigger puzzle". Posted by: JoslynV    Source

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