SAMHSA: Behavioral Health Care Access Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (LGB) Populations

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA’s) Center for Financing Reform and Innovation (CFRI) is releasing a report and hosting a webinar on January 7, 2025, for Behavioral Health Care Access Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (LGB) Populations. This report and webinar highlight findings from the 2023 SAMHSA publication Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Behavioral Health: Results from the 2021 and 2022 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health on the elevated rates of substance use, suicidality, and mental illness among LGB individuals compared to straight individuals.

This report and webinar investigate whether these findings remain statistically significant when controlling for factors such as age, race, educational attainment, marital status, and financial hardship using propensity score matching. By pooling the National Surveys of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) data from 2015 to 2019, this report aims to provide a more nuanced analysis of these disparities, and also examines health insurance coverage and barriers to care within this population.

This report also discusses that although LGB individuals have comparable rates of health insurance coverage, that there are barriers that impact the ability to access treatment for substance use disorder and mental illness, which includes finding LGB-affirming providers, experiencing anti-LGB stigma, finding LGB-affirming providers, and managing patient financial constraints.