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Bisexual-Specific Minority Stressors, Psychological Distress, and Suicidality in Bisexual Individuals: the Mediating Role of Loneliness

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Abstract

Bisexual individuals are at higher risk for poor mental health outcomes compared to heterosexual as well as lesbian and gay individuals and experience minority stressors, such as discrimination, from both heterosexual and sexual minority communities. However, there is little research examining the negative effects of bisexual-specific minority stressors on bisexual individuals’ mental health as well as psychological factors that might help explain minority stressors’ deleterious effects. This research examined the effects of distal minority stressors (i.e., anti-bisexual experiences from both heterosexual as well as lesbian and gay people) and proximal stressors (i.e., internalized heterosexism and sexual orientation concealment) on psychological distress and suicidality among bisexual adults (N = 503). Building on the relational framing of the minority stress model, we also tested one relational factor (i.e., loneliness) as a mediator of the associations between distal and proximal minority stressors and poor mental health (i.e., psychological distress and suicidality). Structural equation modeling analyses were used to test the mediating effects of loneliness on the associations between minority stressors and psychological distress and suicidality. Although distal and proximal minority stressors were not associated with each other, loneliness mediated the effects of distal and proximal minority stressors on psychological distress and suicidality. The results of this study underscore the importance of targeting bisexual-specific minority stressors as well as loneliness in preventive interventions to improve the mental health of bisexual individuals.

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Notes

  1. To ascertain the effects of age, we conducted additional analyses. We first removed 40 participants who did report their age and compared them to participants who reported their age; there were no significant differences in demographic variables or the constructs in our models between these two groups. We then ran a structural model while controlling for age as well as the other aforementioned variables. This model had good fit with the data and similar results to the models presented. To maximize our sample size, we present the models not controlling for age.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Studies, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Gray Hall 119, Washington, DC, 20016, USA

    Ethan H. Mereish

  2. Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital and Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Sabra L. Katz-Wise

  3. VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA

    Julie Woulfe

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  1. Ethan H. Mereish
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  2. Sabra L. Katz-Wise
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  3. Julie Woulfe
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Correspondence to Ethan H. Mereish.

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Funding

Dr. Katz-Wise was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K99HD082340).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Mereish, E.H., Katz-Wise, S.L. & Woulfe, J. Bisexual-Specific Minority Stressors, Psychological Distress, and Suicidality in Bisexual Individuals: the Mediating Role of Loneliness. Prev Sci 18, 716–725 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0804-2

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