Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Empirical research that has used the minority stress framework as a theoretical basis can be categorized as focusing on disparities, mechanisms, and protective factors.First, research that focuses on disparities typically assesses differences in mental health or substance use between sexual and gender minority youth and heterosexual, cisgender youth.For example, meta-analyses found higher odds of suicidality, depressive symptoms, and substance use among sexual minority youth than among heterosexual youth (Lucassen 20 Chapter 1 to parents and peers as sources of such minority stressors (Russell & Fish, 2016) through, for example, peer victimization and parental rejection.Although these minority stressors may elevate mental health problems and substance use, research typically neglects the role of general psychological processes as intermediate links between minority stressors and mental health and substance use, as proposed by the psychological mediation framework (Hatzenbuehler, 2009).General intra-and interpersonal processes such as the fear of negative social evaluation, social support, and substance use norms are expected to mediate the association between minority stressors and mental health and substance use.Chapter 5 therefore aimed to test the minority stress and the psychological mediation framework in one empirical analysis of health disparities between lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents and heterosexual adolescents.Data stem from five waves of the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS), an ongoing prospective cohort study of Dutch youth.Proximal stressors might also affect sexual and gender minority youths' health.Therefore, Chapter 6, the third study on mechanisms, assesses daily experiences with distal and proximal minority stressors and their association with alcohol use.Research suggests that sexual and gender minority youth may use alcohol to cope with sexual or gender identityrelated minority stressors (Hatzenbuehler, 2009).However, there are three drawbacks in the literature on the association between minority stress and alcohol use.First, studies rarely test how multiple minority stressors together relate to sexual and gender minority youth's alcohol use.Second, youth are often asked about past experiences with minority stress and alcohol use, despite that people can have difficulties reconstructing past experiences (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).Last, research has focused on betweenperson differences, neglecting the day-to-day within-person variability in minority stress and whether alcohol is used in response to daily experiences with minority stress.Moreover, there is heterogeneity in alcohol use among sexual and gender minority youth and sex assigned at birth and gender identity have been proposed as potential sources of this heterogeneity (Marshal et al., 2008;Mereish, 2019;Watson et al., 2020).To overcome the shortcomings of previous research, the aim of Chapter 6 is to examine whether daily experiences of minority stress were related to daily alcohol use among sexual and gender minority youth and how these associations differed by sex assigned at birth and gender identity.In order to study this, a 14-day daily diary study among Dutch sexual and gender minority youth was conducted. 22Chapter 1 Not only structural characteristics might protect against the negative effects of minority stress, but also interpersonal level characteristics such as social support.Therefore, Chapter 9 focuses on the association between daily concealment and positive and negative affect and the attenuating effect of family and peer support.A meta-analysis found that concealing one's sexual identity is negatively associated with mental health, especially among younger people (Pachankis et al., 2020).However, research on the association between sexual or gender identity concealment among sexual gender minority adolescents is scarce.Studying concealment in adolescence is especially relevant because sexual orientation and gender identity exploration, disclosure, and concealment are a key part of this developmental period (Russell & Fish, 2016).Further, on a day-to-day basis, there might be variability in concealment.Depending on the social context, sexual and gender minority adolescents may conceal part of their identity (Dewaele et al., 2013;Goldbach & Gibbs, 2017).Social support by family and peers is recognized as directly positively impacting mental health and attenuating the adverse effects of minority stressors, such as identity concealment, on mental health (Turner & Brown, 2010).However, few researchers assess how family's and peers' support may moderate the relation between concealment and mental health among sexual and gender minority adolescents.Therefore, Chapter 9 aims to examine the association between daily identity concealment and positive and negative affect and how social support from family and peers moderated this association among sexual and gender minority adolescents.Data stem from a 21-day daily diary study conducted among US sexual and gender minority adolescents. This DissertationThis dissertation presents eight studies that aim to better understand the poorer mental health and higher substance use among sexual and gender minority youth.All studies use the minority stress framework as a theoretical background and further the field in understanding sexual and gender identity-based health disparities (Chapters 2 and 3), investigate mechanisms that drive these health disparities (Chapters 4 -7), and study protective factors against minority stressors (Chapters 8 and 9).Table 1 provides an overview of these empirical chapters. Sexual Identity Disparities in Mental Health Among UK Adults, US Adults, and US Adolescents: Examining Heterogeneity by Race/Ethnicity 1"Confederate flag (Uh-huh), neighbors call me "fag" (Uh-huh)" BROCKHAMPTON -CASH1 A different version of this chapter is published as: Kiekens, W.
Author: Wouter Kiekens
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4289837519