[Sexual orientation and mental health: a review]. / Orientation sexuelle et santé mentale : une revue de la littérature.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this paper is to review available knowledge on sexual orientation and mental health, especially for women. METHODS: Papers published in English or French, between 1997 and 2007, were selected in PubMed using the following keywords "homosexuality/sexual orientation and mental health/depression/suicide". To be retained, papers had to contain findings from quantitative surveys comparing homosexual and heterosexual adults. In all, this review analyses 22 papers including two that are based on the same survey. RESULTS: This review found a general pattern of poorer mental health for homosexuals and even more so for bisexuals compared to heterosexuals. Results are especially consistent regarding elevated risk of suicide attempts.

[Women who have sex with women: their sexual biography, reproductive health and experience with violence]. / Les femmes qui ont des relations homosexuelles: leur biographie sexuelle, leur santé reproductive et leur expérience des violences.

OBJECTIVE: To compare sociodemographic characteristics, sexual and reproductive biographies and experience of violence according to the fact that women have or have not had homosexual relationship. PATIENTS AND METHODS: From the national survey on violence against women in France carried out in 2000 by phone, two groups have been compared: 78 women who have had at least one woman sexual partner and 6332 women who have had only male partners during lifetime. RESULTS: Women who have had sexual relationships with women more often have high level social positions and live in large cities. They have a more diverse sexual life that they begin younger and more partners, mainly men. They use contraception less often. They have more sexually transmitted infections and are more often tested for HIV. They visit gynaecologists as often as other women. They are more often victims of violence, especially physical violence as adults. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: These results, in an understudied field in France, are consistent with findings from the international literature. They attest to the difficulties women may be confronted with in situations where autonomy and marginality are combined. Doctors need to be better informed about the diversity of their trajectories in order to provide appropriate medical care.

Between man and woman: the character of the lesbian.

Homosexuality, or inversion, is defined by medical discourses since the middle of the XIXth century, as a condition which radically marks individuals so labelled. Through those discourses, a figure, a character, is built. It is no longer precise sexual acts which are at stake, but the totality of the person, who has salient features, biological, psychological as well as behavioral. Those salient features are built on gender mixing, even on sexual characteristics mixing. The inverts, in such a definition, stress the bipolarity of sexes because they embody an intermediate state, the 'third sex'. But this conceptualisation implies also a reinforcement of the two poles of categorisation. Homosexuals do not follow 'the natural law' which defines men and women. Third part excluded from bicategorisation, indifferentiate freaks, those characters are analysers for social definitions of sexes, genders and their evolution.