Same Sex Parents: Children score high on health and wellbeing

Australian children of same-sex couples fared better on average than families from the general population on measures of general health and family cohesion, but continue to be subject to discrimination, interim findings of a University of Melbourne led study has found.

Lead researcher Dr Simon Crouch, from the McCaughey Vichealth Centre for Community Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne said the early findings suggested Australian children with same-sex attracted parents were developing well.

"These children are growing up in a range of contexts and score well on measures of health and wellbeing in the face of discrimination," he said.

Simon Crouch

Early findings taken from the global index the Child Health Questionnaire, measured the health of the children across a number of domains including physical activity, mental health and behaviour.

Children with same-sex attracted parents were seen to score particularly well in the domains of general health and family cohesion.

The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families (ACHESS) involved 500 children aged two months to 17 years from 315 parents.

The parents described a range of sexual orientations including homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer, and were from all states around Australian except the Northern Territory.

Interim results revealed:

• Children aged five to 17 years with same-sex attracted parents showed a significantly better score on general health and family cohesion when compared to Australian children from all backgrounds and family contexts. 
• For all other health measures there were no statistically significant differences 
• 80 per cent of respondents were female parents and 18 per cent were male parent, with two per cent of parents being of other gender. 
• Ninety-three per cent of parents are currently in a relationship. 
• Australian children with same-sex attracted parents and their families continue to face discrimination in a variety of contexts. 

The University of Melbourne led study, is the biggest of its kind to investigate the complete physical, mental and social wellbeing of children with same-sex attracted parents, and in particular the role that stigma and discrimination play in their health and wellbeing.

"There are an increasing number of children with same-sex attracted parents in Australia. International research to date has suggested that these children are doing well in many aspects of their lives, however they are often affected by the discrimination that their families may experience due to parental sexual orientation," Dr Crouch said.

"These results are promising and we look forward to further findings which we expect later this year," he said.

Epilepsy breakthrough: Australia-led study

An Australia-led study has identified a gene associated with a common form of epilepsy which could lead to earlier diagnosis, a researcher said Tuesday.

Melbourne University academic Ingrid Scheffer said a number of genes linked to epilepsy were known to scientists, but these related to rare families in which a large number of members had the condition.

"The reason that this discovery is very important is that it's not just for rare families, we think it will be a gene that will be important for people without a family history," Scheffer reported.

The study is published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Ingrid Scheffer

"So it's changing the game in terms of being important for a much broader number of people with focal epilepsy."

Focal, or partial, seizures start in one part of the brain and affect the part of the body controlled by that part of the brain.

Scheffer said a clinical diagnosis could not be made for epilepsy without seizures of some kind but the finding could aid genetic counselling and diagnosis—particularly in cases where everything else in the brain is normal.

"When you have epilepsy people always say, 'Why have I got this?' And this is the next level, which is the gene test," she said.

"So they will be able to be tested for this gene, and that's important in terms of understanding the cause, in terms of treatment, and hopefully this will one day help outcomes.

"And it's also important in terms of genetic counselling for their own children," she said, meaning people would be able to assess the risk for their own offspring if they were found to have the gene.

The research comes after new gene detection techniques allowed scientists to pinpoint the abnormality, finding it in 12 percent of the 80 families studied, in which one or more members had epilepsy.

"That's huge to find a gene that picks up 12 percent, 12 percent of the common cause of epilepsy," Scheffer said.

"I think that it means that if you look at anybody with focal epilepsy—without an abnormality on their MRIs, what we call a structural abnormality—my guess is that it will be 2-4 percent of them will have this cause."

The research, published in the April issue of the journal Nature Genetics, also involved scientists in Europe and Canada.

Most of the families studied were Australian, but the group included some from Spain, Israel, Italy and elsewhere, Scheffer said.

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