Mental Health Issues among Gay Population in Australia

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH
Mental Health
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

MENTAL HEALTH
While homosexual people like gay are as versatile as rest of the population, their
shared experience of discrimination generates common mental health issues. Australian
society generally highlights heterosexuality as the most common and acceptable sexual
orientation and this make the homosexual community like gay or lesbian marginalised and
discriminated against (Grulich et al., 2014). The following essay aims to highlight the mental
health issues associated with the gay or homosexual group of population residing in
Australian, their stigmatization and possible treatment issue that must be undertaken in order
to help them recover from the mental health complications.
Meyer (2013), is of the opinion that the mental health issues of gay men at times go
beyond the discrimination and stigma. In order to fully understand their sexual orientation
and the subsequent impact on the mental health, one needs to thoroughly examine the
existential crises, associated family problems, society stereotypes and the effects on the
LGBT community and much more issues. All of these issues make the homosexual men or
gay men more likely to develop mental illness and at times the depression becomes so severe
that they are forced to commit suicide. According to Feinstein, Goldfried and Davila (2012),
when gay men spend years expose d to homophobic stereotypes and myths, a sudden group
of homosexual population internalize this negativity wither consciously and subconsciously
and believe this stereotypes to be true and this leads to the generation of internalised
homophobia. Internalised homophobia exacerbates general stress and they fail to interact
freely with family members and friends leading to isolation. Strother et al (2012) highlighted,
apart from looking down upon the homosexual community or gay population, there are other
issues as well. Among the gay male community there are unreasonable body image
expectation and other overvaluing stereotypically heterosexual qualities like a constant effort
of being masculine. Because of this body image issues, homosexual group of population
suffers from an increase risk of developing eating disorders. According to Meyer (2013), for

MENTAL HEALTH
gay men, peer pressure along with body dissatisfaction are among few of the principal factors
that increases the risk of developing mental health complication. Lanzieri and Cook (2013)
highlight other opinion like masculine ideals and rejection of femininity exacerbate the body
image issues and leading to the generation of frustration and subsequently development of
severe depression. According to Lanzieri and Cook (2013), society has a stereotypic structure
for both male and female body type. The so called “healthy” group of population, the
heterosexual male community suffers from a peer pressure to expressing masculine body
features and mannerism. Now this pressure exceeds 10 folds when it comes to the
homosexual group of male population of gay community. These pressure, comes from family
members, media who perpetuates effeminate gay stereotypes and other gay men to display
stereotypic masculine qualities all these pressure cumulates into massive expectation and
failing to live up to this expectation leads force the homosexual gay community to pass into
severe depression (Brennan et al., 2013). According to Meyer (2013), the response that the
gay men receive while introducing them to the society as gay for the first time is the major
predictor of mental health issues while they need to deal with for the rest of their life.
Rejection of their sexuality generally increases the risk of anxiety and depression. Meyer
(2013), believed that while passing through the depression limits interaction with people,
further increasing depression. The mental health complication among the homosexual gay
community also has political perspectives. When the politicians or other religious figures in
the society defend legislation or rights of gay people, it reinforces a belief among the gay
men that they are not in parity with the heterosexual group of population and this
discrimination exacerbates the mental health issues among them (Bosia, 2014).
In order to provide the homosexual population in the society equal rights, Australian
Parliament voted overwhelmingly to legalize the concept of same-sex marriage (The New
York Times, 2017). Though a handful of lawmakers tried to add new amendments that they