New research published today into bisexual and gay men’s health highlights some frightening figures for those working with bi men.

Stonewall’s survey looks at bi and gay men’s health, as a counterpart to a similar women’s survey they conducted a few years ago.

Mostly it combines bi and gay data together, however two snippets illustrate ways it can be different for bisexuals:

“In the last year, 27 per cent of gay men thought about taking their own life even if they would not do it. This increases to 38 per cent for bisexual men” (p9)

At around 1/3 higher that is surely statistically significant. They also report that

“One in five (21 per cent) gay and bisexual men aged 16 to 19 have deliberately harmed themselves in the last year. One in six (15 per cent) gay and bisexual men aged 16 to 24 have deliberately harmed themselves in the last year. Seven per cent of men in general aged 16 to 24 have ever deliberately harmed themselves.

“Rates of self-harm are also higher among bisexual men; eleven per cent of bisexual men have self-harmed in the last year.” (p11)

The report is online on Stonewall’s website here.

Stonewall say the data will be broken down by regions for a series of area statistics reports. The first area report to be published looks at the figures for Scotland specifically, where it says 3% of gay men and 7% of bisexual men in Scotland have attempted to take their own life in the last year.

Data for other areas will follow and we imagine bi social & support groups like Manchester BiPhoria and Brighton Bothways will take special interest in their local statistics.