Using arts-based methods to understand LGBT+ experiences of accessing the Brazilian health care system.

Abstract

All over the world, health care professionals continue to display discriminatory attitudes and behaviours towards LGBT+ people. This arts-based secondary analysis analyses the narratives of 116 LGBT+ individuals as they sought to navigate the Brazilian health care system. Participants described the health care they received as a form of erasure that was detrimental to their own perceived self-worth and overall health and mental well-being. LGBT+ people are subjected to overwhelming discrimination at all ages. Participants articulated not being able to live freely and having to hide or deny their own sexuality and gender identity to obtain equitable access to health care. Having to do this was described as having to live a non-life in a martyr-like existence. Recognition of this 'non-life' existence urges us not to accept the status quo. It calls on us to initiate social change within educational institutions and health systems internationally to disrupt and reject discrimination and oppression of this kind.