The impact of sources of stigma on health care avoidance among gay and bisexual men in Australia

ABSTRACT

Stigma has a negative impact on health and wellbeing for gay and bisexual men (GBM). There is little research which assesses whether stigma from various sources affects access to different health care services. Further, those people who pay more attention to their stigmatised condition may be more likely to avoid health services. This study aimed to assess the association between sources of stigma and health care avoidance amongst a sample of GBM, as well as the role of heightened stigma sensitivity. The sample consisted of 1116 GBM in Australia who completed an online survey. Findings illustrate that those reporting any stigma were more likely to avoid health care services, while avoiding different types of health care was related to the source of the stigma. Greater stigma sensitivity was associated with avoidance of all health care services. GBM may come to health services with complex and potentially recurrent experiences of stigma. Working on the assumption that clients have a history of negative experiences in health care will increase the ability of services to work sensitively with GBM clients and ensure that access to health care amongst this group is increased.

KEYWORDS:

• Discrimination
• health care
• gay and bisexual men
• stigma
• stigma sensitivity

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health. We would also like to thank everyone who completed the survey for their willingness to participate in this project. For more information on this project, please see the project website: http://bit.ly/stigma-indicators.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health.