SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND ASSOCIATED CHARACTERISTICS AMONG NORTH-AMERICAN ACADEMIC PSYCHIATRISTS

We mailed questionnaires inquiring about a range of personal and profe ssional attributes to 972 North American psychiatrists at five leading medical schools in the United States and Canada. Of these, 49% (435 p sychiatrists) responded. Of the respondents, 90.9% reported being excl usively heterosexual, 3.5% predominantly heterosexual, and 5.6% bisexu al/homosexual. Analyses were performed to assess the relationship betw een sexual orientation and other variables. We found that exclusive he terosexuals were more likely than other psychiatrists to be Jewish (p =.002), to have first-degree relatives with psychiatric illness (p =.0 15), and to have conducted research after residency training (p =.034) . Exclusively heterosexual psychiatrists were less likely to have used recreational drugs (p =.025), or to prescribe psychotropic medication s to none of their patients (p =.017). Sexual orientation was not corr elated with a variety of other personal and professional characteristi cs. The findings suggest that gay men and lesbians are represented wit hin psychiatry at rates comparable to their estimated representation i n society. Moreover; the data invite several hypotheses-for example, t hat medical students may be drawn to psychiatry for specific reasons s uch as feeling marginalized due to being gay or bisexual.