«le désespoir infini qui habitait tout mon corps et toute mon âme. je pensais ne jamais avoir un jour meilleur.»

Jacques

Mental Health and Suicide Surveys

The quotes in the image are responses to open questions asked of participants in 2007 and 2011 on depression. Since the participation in the gay healthsurvey was on an anonymous basis, the first names used are fictitious.

Following the worrying findings of the baseline survey on mental health among gay and bisexual men, we carried out two further surveys in 2007 and 2011 based on mental health and suicide.

Vignettes describing a depressed person helped assess attitudes and knowledge regarding mental health as well as beliefs surrounding treatment. These questionnaires also included open-ended questions for participants who had suffered from depression or attempted suicide in order to understand what they believed the reasons were for their illness or their action and what they did on their own behalf afterwards. Some of these responses appear as quotes on the site.

The same sampling method was used for these surveys as for the baseline survey.

These two further research actions were also used as pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys to assess the impact of the “Blues Out” project in the gay community.

Number of participants in all 3 gay health project surveys

	2002	2007	2011
No. of participants	571	276	486
Response rate	68%	44%	38%
% of responses on Internet dating sites	7%	19%	21%
% of gay men	87%	92%	89%
% of participants based in Geneva	50%	56%	45%
% of under 25 years of age	17%	21%	14%