(Press-News.org) Asian Canadian teenagers who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are 30 times more likely to face harassment than their heterosexual peers – a factor that is linked to higher rates of alcohol or drug use, according to University of British Columbia research.
Recently published in the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, this is the first study in North America to investigate the links between Asian teens dealing with "dual minority discrimination," problem substance use and supports that can help reduce those risks.
"Discrimination for both ethnicity and sexual orientation is an important issue, especially in B.C., where at least 20 per cent of young people are of East Asian or Southeast Asian origin," says Elizabeth Saewyc, professor of nursing and adolescent medicine in the UBC School of Nursing, and research director for the McCreary Centre Society. "It can create even greater stress than experiencing racism or homophobia alone."
Saewyc, the lead investigator, says, "Our study shows schools need to consider cultural diversity in their strategies to reduce homophobic bullying in schools, and work to create school environments where all students feel safe and connected."
The study also shows that social supports, whether from family, school, or peers, may help buffer the stress of harassment for Asian Canadian adolescents.
Saewyc's co-authors are Research Associate Colleen Poon at the McCreary Centre Society, and Weihong Chen, a former post-doctoral research fellow at the UBC School of Nursing.
The researchers analyzed data from the 2003 British Columbia Adolescent Health (BCAH) Survey, focusing on respondents who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) or mostly heterosexual, and East or Southeast Asian, which includes Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Cambodian.
Six per cent of Asian Canadian boys and 11 per cent of Asian Canadian girls identified as LGB or mostly heterosexual, representing an estimated 4,389 students enrolled across the province. Conducted by the McCreary Centre Society, the BCAH survey was completed by more than 30,000 B.C. students in Grades 7-12.
"It may be culturally taboo for some Asian youth to speak about matters related to sex, sexual orientation and sexual abuse, so school and health professionals need to consider culturally sensitive services," says Saewyc, adding that language barriers can also be an issue, as more than one-fifth of the adolescents in the study sample were recent immigrants, and more than half spoke a language other than English at home.
The study is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's (CIHR) Institute of Population and Public Health and Institute of Gender and Health.
"This study helps us not only to pinpoint who is most at risk for discrimination and bullying, but also what can be done about it," says CIHR Institute of Gender and Health Scientific Director Prof. Joy Johnson. "The finding that connectedness and extracurricular involvement halved the likelihood of substance use for this group is remarkable."
Key findings include:
Asian Canadian LGB youth were 26 to 29 times more likely than their heterosexual peers to report being discriminated against due to their sexual orientation.
Asian Canadian sexual minority students who experienced multiple types of bullying and discrimination were more than 10 times as likely to report problems because of alcohol or drug use as heterosexual peers.
Among those who experienced high rates of stigma and abuse, their chance of problem substance use was cut in half if they had high levels of school or family connectedness, friends with healthy attitudes, or involvement in extracurriculars like sports or music.
###
A copy of the full research paper can be downloaded at http://cjcmh.metapress.com/link.asp?id=u220606l7875.
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada's health research investment agency. CIHR's mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to enable its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened Canadian health care system. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to more than 14,100 health researchers and trainees across Canada.
END
WHAT:
Mosquitoes infected with dengue virus experience an array of changes in the activity of genes and associated functions of their salivary glands, and these changes may lead to increased virus transmission, according to a recent study led by George Dimopoulos, Ph.D., of the Malaria Research Institute and Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Some of these changes involve the mosquito's immune system and affect its susceptibility to infection with the virus. Others involve factors that enhance the mosquito's capacity to feed on blood, possibly ...
Boulder, Colorado, USA – The April/May GSA Today science article is now online at www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/. In this issue, Simon Williams and colleagues from the Earthbyte Group of the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney present GPlates, a powerful new method for analyzing geological and geophysical data sets within the context of tectonic reconstructions.
GPlates is part of a new generation of plate reconstruction software that incorporates functionality familiar from GIS software with the added dimension of geological time. By enabling the user to ...
Graphite, more commonly known as pencil lead, could become the next big thing in the quest for smaller and less power-hungry electronics.
Resembling chicken wire on a nano scale, graphene – single sheets of graphite – is only one atom thick, making it the world's thinnest material. Two million graphene sheets stacked up would not be as thick as a credit card.
The tricky part physicists have yet to figure out how to control the flow of electrons through the material, a necessary prerequisite for putting it to work in any type of electronic circuit. Graphene behaves very ...
Amsterdam, NL -- Investigators from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, have shown that in most elderly patients invasive and expensive techniques, i.e. lumbar puncture and PET scan, are not useful to establish the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. They arrived at this conclusion after analysis of data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), a large collaborative research project of medical centers in the USA and Canada.
The Dutch researchers divided the ADNI sample into two halves, a younger (74 y). They showed that the CSF biomarkers (amyloid ...
London -- New strategies injecting cardiovascular disease (CVD) patients with vaccines and monoclonal antibodies to combat atherosclerosis could soon change the treatment landscape of heart disease. Both approaches, Professor Jan Nilsson told delegates at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2012 meeting, can be considered truly ground breaking since for the first time they target the underlying cause of CVD. The FCVB meeting, organised by the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science (CBCS) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), held 30 March to 1 April at ...
Children who develop asthma by age seven have deficits in lung function and increased bronchial responsiveness as neonates, a new study from researchers in Denmark suggests.
"Previous research on the relationship between neonatal lung function and the development of asthma has been conflicting," said lead author Hans Bisgaard, MD, DMSci, professor of pediatrics at the University of Copenhagen and head of the Danish Pediatric Asthma Centre. "Our study shows that children with asthma by age seven already had significant airflow deficits and increased bronchial responsiveness ...
DARIEN, IL – Obstructive sleep apnea and other symptoms of OSA are associated with probable major depression, regardless of factors like weight, age, sex or race, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There was no link between depression and snoring.
"Snorting, gasping or stopping breathing while asleep was associated with nearly all depression symptoms, including feeling hopeless and feeling like a failure," said Anne G. Wheaton, PhD, lead author of the study. "We expected persons with sleep-disordered breathing to report trouble ...
A single-center study found that percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures performed during the middle of the night do not adversely affect the safety and effectiveness of procedures performed the next day by the same operator. Findings now available in Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), show late night work while on call does not worsen performance of the interventionist doing PCIs the next day.
Studies have shown that sleep ...
STANFORD, Calif. — Nine out of 10 drugs successfully tested in mice and other animal models ultimately fail to work in people, and one reason may be traced back to a common fact of life for laboratory mice: they're cold, according to a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Laboratory mice, which account for the vast majority of animal research subjects, are routinely housed in chilly conditions, which may affect their well-being as well as the outcome of research studies, said Joseph Garner, PhD, associate professor of comparative medicine.
"If you ...
London -- Russians born during the Leningrad Siege in World War II, which was responsible for some of the greatest losses of civilian life in history, are giving scientists new strategies to identify people who experienced intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and starvation during childhood at greatest risk of developing long term heart complications. The abstract study¹, presented at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) meeting, in London, UK, 30 March to 1 April 2012, makes use of a unique population of people exposed to extreme starvation both as foetuses ...
