STUDY: Gay Teenagers Are More Than Twice As Likely To Suffer From Insomnia

 

According to one study, gay teenagers are more than twice as likely as their straight peers to have difficulty sleeping.

 

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, polled 8,500 teenagers, including 374 gay teenagers, about their sleeping habits.

 

Over the previous two weeks, 35% of LGBT people reported difficulty falling or staying asleep.

 

However, only 13.5 percent of young people who identified as straight reported the same issues.

 

The researchers hypothesize that LGBT youths are kept awake at night by discrimination, bullying, and family conflicts.

 

Previous research has identified sleep problems among sexual minorities. However, the researchers believe that their paper is the first to identify it among LGBT youths.

 

Researchers extracted survey data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study for the study, which was published in the journal LGBT Health (ABCD study).

 

From 2018 to 2020, this study used advanced brain imaging to track the growth of brains in adolescents from 21 sites across the United States. It also included survey data on other lifestyle factors such as sleep and sexuality from parents and their children.

 

Researchers examined data from 8,500 children aged 10 to 14 years old.

 

A total of 7,484 people said they were straight, 376 said they were gay, and 325 said they might be gay.

 

According to the findings, 15% of participants, or one in every six, had difficulty sleeping.

 

The term “electronic commerce” refers to the sale of goods and services over the internet.

 

The researchers advocated for more interventions to assist LGBT youths, such as increasing acceptance in families and schools.

 

They concluded: ‘In sum, our results indicate that sexual minority status may be linked to sleep problems in early adolescence.

 

‘Depressive problems, stress, less parental monitoring and more family conflict partially mediate disparities in sleep health for sexual minority youth.

 

‘Interventions to promote family and caregiver acceptance and mental health support for sexual minority youth can potentially improve their sleep and other health outcomes.’

 

Limitations of the study include that it relied on self-reported sleep patterns, which could be subject to recall bias.

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