A Boston University study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics finds bisexual youth and young adults, especially around the time of coming out, two times more likely to smoke than heterosexual young people. The study also found that coming out as a gay, lesbian or other non-heterosexual young person was not significantly associated with being more likely to smoke.
“Bisexual young people may face unique forms of discrimination and stigma that increase their risk for smoking or other substance use behaviors,” says the study’s lead author, Alyssa Harlow, in a press release from BU’s School of Public Health.
“For example, they may experience stigma from heterosexual individuals as well as from within the LGB+ community. There’s also prior research that shows that bisexual populations have worse mental health outcomes than LG+ populations,” Harlow says. ‘The findings point to a need for public health interventions specifically designed to address the unique needs, experiences, and stressors associated with coming out and identifying as bisexual.”
According to the press release:
Published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, the nationally-representative cohort study followed 7,843 youth and young adults over three years, finding that those who came out as bisexual were twice as likely as consistently-heterosexual participants to start smoking. Coming out as lesbian, gay, or another non-heterosexual identity, or having a consistent LG+ identity, was not associated with being more likely to smoke.
The study “highlights the importance of moving beyond static measures of sexual identity towards more dynamic measures that capture critical periods of vulnerability,” says Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global health and the study’s corresponding author.
“This approach turned out to be really important, because it revealed disparities that would have otherwise been missed if we measured identity at one time point, or grouped all LGB+ identities together,” says study lead author Alyssa Harlow, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Epidemiology.
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