SAMHSA has released data from the 2021 and 2022 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health which indicated that lesbian, gay and bisexual adults are more likely than straight adults to use substances, experience mental health conditions including major depressive episodes, and experience serious thoughts of suicide.

The report covers adults aged 18 or older.

Age adjusted findings include:

• Lesbian and bisexual females were more likely than straight females to have engaged in binge drinking in the past month, and about twice as likely to have engaged in heavy drinking in the past month.
• Gay and bisexual males and females were two to three times more likely than their straight counterparts to have used illicit drugs other than marijuana in the past year.
• About one third of bisexual females, bisexual males, and gay males had a substance use disorder (SUD) in the past year. About one fourth of lesbian females had an SUD in the past year.
• Bisexual females were three times more likely than straight females to have had an opioid use disorder in the past year.
• The prevalence of serious mental illness (SMI) in the past year was more than three times higher among bisexual males than among straight males and more than twice as high among gay males than among straight males.
• More than one in four bisexual females and more than one in seven lesbian females had a major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year. Sexual minority males were two to three times more likely than straight males to have had an MDE in the past year.
• Bisexual females were six times more likely to have attempted suicide in the past year than straight females.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. To learn how to get support for mental health, drug and alcohol issues, visit FindSupport.gov.

Navis Clinical Laboratories offers toxicology drug testing and mental health drug testing solutions to help combat the growing substance use and mental health crisis in the United States. Contact us to learn more about our solutions.