Symposia
Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders and Disasters
Carter E. Bedford, PhD
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
Aoife Trotter, High School Diploma
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
Brad B. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Florida State University, Psychology Department
Tallahassee, Florida
Background: Extant research has found that sexual violence disproportionately affects LGBTQ-identified individuals, conferring risk for the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and related conditions. However, little research has focused on specific vulnerabilities experienced by LGBTQ-identified sexual assault survivors, such as minority stress, and whether these factors exacerbate risk for negative mental health outcomes. Thus, we examined the relationships between experiences of minority stress and measures of psychopathology.
Method: 154 individuals (110 LGBT-identified, 44 cisgender-heterosexual) were recruited from the Qualtrics participant pool and completed a battery of self-report measures. The final sample had a mean age of 40.56 years (SD = 13.57); 55.8% of the sample identified as women, 43.5% as men, and 6% as non-binary. LGBT-identified individuals were deliberately over-sampled to ensure adequate representation of each sexual and gender identity group.
Results: As compared to cisgender-heterosexual individuals, LGBT-identified individuals reported significantly greater experiences of internalized homophobia, t(152) = -2.84, p = 0.001, and violence and victimization, t(152) = -6.39, p < 0.001. A series of hierarchical regression models examined the associations between the minority stress factors and dependent measures of psychopathology. Among LGBT-identified individuals, endorsement of internalized homophobia was associated with PTSS (t = 3.70, β = 0.39, p < 0.001), depression (t = 3.56, β = 0.38, p < 0.001), anxiety (t = 3.67, β = 0.37, p < 0.001), alcohol use (t = 4.03, β = 0.40, p < 0.001), and cannabis use (t = 4.32, β = 0.44, p < 0.001), over and above the contributions of age, gender, race, and the other minority stress factors. Among cisgender-heterosexual individuals, community connectedness was inversely associated with depression (t = -2.17, β = -0.34, p = 0.037) and anxiety (t = -3.23, β = -0.39, p = 0.003).
Conclusion: While further longitudinal work is needed, the findings of the present study indicate that the experience of internalized homophobia may be a particularly important risk factor for negative mental health outcomes among LGBT-identified sexual assault survivors. Conversely, a lack of social support may be more predictive of psychopathology in cisgender-heterosexual survivors.