Good morning, heartache: how are gays dealing with the added anxiety of life after September 11? Andrew Solomon, author and expert on depression, talks about our fears of being hated��and hunted - Aftermath - Brief Article - Interview

Long before September 11, the gay community was disproportionately afflicted by depression. We get our due in Andrew Solomon's encyclopedic The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Not a doctor but an inquisitive layman, the gay, 38-year-old New Yorker became interested in the subject while struggling with his own depression. Thanks to rave reviews and an anxious reading public, Demon was one of the year's hits, winning a National Book Award in November. The Advocate asked Solomon about gays and depression, especially in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

How does it feel to have won the National Book Award?

Exhilarating. I was particularly proud that the award was given to a book on a general psychological issue, written by a gay man who discusses his own sexuality in the book. Even 10 years ago, I think reviewers would have said that my narrative of my own depression was determined by my sexuality and was therefore perhaps irrelevant to the general public.

Do you see evidence that gay New Yorkers have had more trouble coping with the disaster than heterosexuals?

What's been fairly conclusively demonstrated--Columbia [University] just did a study on it--is that people who have been depressed at any point in their lives were likely to relapse after September 11. Almost everyone who had ever experienced depression had their basic sense of world security shattered, developed an anxiety about what was going to happen next, and returned to previous depression. [After] September 11 people relied on their partners, their families, or support groups for help. And more gay people lack those networks.

Gay people were also less likely to hear their own stories told in the context of the attacks.

I feel extremely angry about that. Gay people were attacked, and gay people were heroic in these events. I feel it should be acknowledged; it should be a moment for some good PR for our community. The failure of the mainstream press in general, and The New York Times in particular, to talk about the sexuality of the people who were involved makes me very uncomfortable and is very devastating. They're supposed to know better.

Why is depression more common among gays and lesbians than in the general population?

Internalized and externalized homophobia come together in a nasty way in gay depression. People experience a lot of rejection from within their own families, being unequal in the eyes of the government, etc. There is a feeling that they have a horrible secret; what they are is bad and wrong. Not being able to be fully yourself--and gay people learn this in school--is a huge trauma. Some young gay people now seem to manage without any adolescent trauma, but this is very recent.

Being coupled is one of the best defenses against depression, and gay people are more likely to be single than straight people are. People who have good support structures are likely to do better than people who are somewhat isolated and lonely.

Gays in New York, and other metropolitan centers, have come here as a refuge; now they feel endangered here as well.

The more hated you perceive yourself to be, the more devastating it is to be the object of someone else's hatred. A lot of gay people in New York have run away from places where they were not well loved. Being here and feeling vulnerable gives you a feeling of having no place to go.

Do you have any advice for gays and lesbians coping with depression after the bombings?

The mood among gays and lesbians recalls that feeling when the AIDS crisis broke: We feel desolate and alone and need to turn to community for support. Those who have come through relatively unscathed should do all they can to make themselves available to others. At the same time, there's an impulse to launch into relationships that don't have much real basis, and sudden leaps into false intimacy can be extremely toxic. It's a time for keeping the home fires burning.

Klein has also written for Metropolis and Architectural Record.

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