Rendering visible the previously invisible in health care: the ageing LGBTI communities | The Medical Journal of Australia
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Rendering visible the previously invisible in health care: the ageing LGBTI communities

Carmelle Peisah, Kim Burns, Samantha Edmonds and Henry Brodaty
Med J Aust 2018; 209 (3): . || doi: 10.5694/mja17.00896
Published online: 23 July 2018

Recent legislative and policy measures aim to raise awareness of the needs of older lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people

Ageing is often said to incur invisibility. Perhaps the most invisible and forgotten are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) elders (Box).1 This invisibility has consequences for access to health and aged care services, and the standard of mental and physical health among LGBTI elders has been notoriously lower than that of their heterosexual peers2 (https://lgbtihealth.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/SNAPSHOT-Mental-Health-and-Suicide-Prevention-Outcomes-for-LGBTI-people-and-communities.pdf). Recently, there have been efforts to redress these gaps on a legislative and policy front, supported by a number of initiatives to raise awareness. This article briefly reviews this changing area of medicine and outlines some of the implications for clinical practice.

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