This is part 13 of the Nursing Research Challenge.

The Article: Hein, L. (2010). Where did you sleep last night? Homeless male adolescents: Gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual compared. Southern Online Nursing Journal of Research, 10(1). Accessed at http://snrs.org/publications/SOJNR_articles2/Vol10Num01Art09.pdf.

The Big Idea: This comparative study compares gay, bisexual, and transgendered (GBT) male youths with heterosexual male youths, examining the factors leading to their homelessness, their utilization of homeless youth services, their “outness,” and the places they sleep each night.

Survey Says!: Initial reasons for homelessness varied among both groups and included youth, parental, and system sources. Nightly sleeping arrangements – shelter services, sofa-surfing, or the streets – depended on age, and levels of “outness” also varied for reasons such as pure survival.

Quotable: “Approximately 1.7 million adolescents are homeless in America each year, and 40% are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).”

“Sexual orientation/ gender identity was an important factor in this study: 75% of transgender youth, 33% of bisexual youth, and 23% of gay youth became homeless due to their sexual orientation/ gender identity.”

“Homeless youth have mortality rates eleven times higher than non-homeless youth, higher hospital admission rates, and use emergency departments for healthcare at 2.6 times the rates of non-homeless persons.”

So What?: Besides the obvious – nurses need to understand reasons for homelessness,  must be conscious of sexual orientation when trying to impact homelessness for GBT youth, and should look beyond homeless services such as shelters to reach GBT male youth – this article provided great insight into research methods utilized for an underserved, transient population. It’s fascinating, and in my opinion, a very important topic that is often overlooked.