Professor Mark Hughes

Despite recent equality reforms, there remain significant mental health disparities between sexual and gender diverse (SGD) Australians and the general population. Multiple studies have reported higher levels of loneliness among SGD people, particularly among transgender and nonbinary people. One factor related to loneliness that is much debated is age with some studies suggesting older people are more at risk and others finding contradictory evidence, including among SGD people. To examine age-based loneliness trends among different groups of SGD people, we analyzed Australian data (n = 284) from the Global Pride Study to examine how key individual and social variables differ by age and the extent they predict loneliness (measured by the 3-item Loneliness Scale).