Trigger Warning: Mention of self-harm, suicide, drug use.
If you haven’t read the blog posts titled “Minority Stress Theory” and “Risk Factors and Protective Factors” yet, please do so.
Well, now that you've read those, what evidence do we have that mental illness is a real problem within the LGBTQ+ community? In a word- plenty. Minority stress combined with low protective factors and high risk factors makes for a dangerous combination. This process is shown in a study by Potoczniak, Aldea, and DeBlaere (2007) which found that the more LGBTQ+ individuals hid their identity (due to stigma), the less connected they felt to others. This lack of social support (low protective factor) was also related to higher levels of social anxiety (increased severity of mental illness).
Another study by Borgogna, McDermott, Aita & Kridel (2019) did something interesting, in that they examined a wide variety of sexual and gender minorities which aren’t usually studied; including identities like pansexual, asexual, gender nonconforming, questioning, and queer (see Terminology section). They looked at anxiety and depression in these LGBTQ+ individuals and found the following results:
LGBTQ+ gender minorities had poorer mental health than cisgender individuals, with gender nonconforming individuals having the unhealthiest results.
Similarly, sexual minorities had poorer health than heterosexual individuals, with newer labels (pansexual, asexual, demisexual, etc) having the unhealthiest results.
People who had both a LGBTQ+ gender identity and sexuality had the most distressing results out of any group.
What we see from this study is that the stressful effects of being stigmatized can combine from multiple identities. This makes you wonder about what kind of results studies with LGBTQ+ people of color would receive. What this study also shows is that LGBTQ+ individuals who have identities which reject binary standards or are relatively unknown by the general public also tend to have higher mental health issues (even compared to other members of the LGBTQ+ community). They are even more likely to be misunderstood by the general cisgender/heterosexual population, because on top of being LGBTQ+, their identities are more fluid or reject strongly held notions about sexuality and gender binaries.
An important source to mention when talking about LGBTQ+ mental health by Russell and Joyner (2001). This was the first study to use a large national sample and random sampling (a psychological procedure which helps ensure that the only non-random difference between the people being studied is the difference you are looking at) to determine whether youth with same-sex orientation are at greater risk for suicide than heterosexual youth. They also looked at whether or not these gay/lesbian youth would still be more likely to commit suicide even after risk factors were taken away. The risk factors they looked at for suicide were thinking about suicide in the last year and the number of suicide attempts made in the same period of time. They found that gay/lesbian youth were much more likely to experience these risk factors compared to heterosexual youth, and that they were also at risk for alcohol use and depression (which are, in turn, risk factors for suicide). LGBTQ+ youth were also two times more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual youth. Even when all of the risk factors were taken out of the analyses, the researchers still found that LGBTQ+ youth were more likely to attempt suicide. The risk factors they looked at only partially explained the tendency towards suicidality. These results make more sense when thinking about all the other influences on LGBTQ+ mental health discussed in this blog, such as minority stress, family rejection, and homelessness.
The last article that will be discussed in this blog post was about a study by Smalley, Warren, and Barefoot (2016) which included over 3,000 participants. Only cisgender, heterosexual participants were excluded from the study, so all the participants were either a sexual minority, a gender minority, or both. Smalley et. al. (2016) gave the participants a survey called the Health Risk Questionnaire, which covers various facets of health such as diet, substance use, medical risk-taking, and so on. They found that cisgender males and transgender females had the riskiest lifestyles. Bisexual individuals had the highest use of both marijuana and nonmarijuana substances. Cisgender men who were also sexual minorities were most likely to drink alcohol, in general and to excess. Drug use and poor mental health can influence each other, so this elevated usage of drugs has negative implications when considering all the other studies that cite LGBTQ+ individuals as being more stressed.
The research cited here is but a tiny drop in the sea of literature available which indicates that LGBTQ+ individuals suffer from poor mental health compared to non-LGBTQ+ individuals. However, it gives a good overview of how these mental disorders may impact the community and affect people differentially based on their specific identity(ies). There is another blog post in this category which reviews similar information, specifically about the transgender community.
The following video gives further information about mental health issues in the LGBTQ+ community and interviews a gay man whose partner committed suicide.
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