Elsevier

Behavior Therapy

Volume 47, Issue 1, January 2016, Pages 91-101
Behavior Therapy

Anxiety and Related Disorders and Concealment in Sexual Minority Young Adults

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2015.09.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We investigate anxiety and related disorders in sexual minority young adults.

  • We investigate sexual orientation concealment as a predictor of disorders.

  • Sexual minorities displayed higher symptoms of anxiety and related disorders.

  • Sexual minority women appear to be at the most risk for anxiety and related disorders.

  • Sexual orientation concealment was associated social phobia in sexual minorities.

Abstract

Sexual minorities face greater exposure to discrimination and rejection than heterosexuals. Given these threats, sexual minorities may engage in sexual orientation concealment in order to avoid danger. This social stigma and minority stress places sexual minorities at risk for anxiety and related disorders. Given that three fourths of anxiety disorder onset occurs before the age of 24, the current study investigated the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression in sexual minority young adults relative to their heterosexual peers. Secondarily, the study investigated sexual orientation concealment as a predictor of anxiety and related disorders. A sample of 157 sexual minority and 157 heterosexual young adults matched on age and gender completed self-report measures of the aforementioned disorders, and indicated their level of sexual orientation concealment. Results revealed that sexual minority young adults reported greater symptoms relative to heterosexuals across all outcome measures. There were no interactions between sexual minority status and gender, however, women had higher symptoms across all disorders. Sexual minority young women appeared to be at the most risk for clinical levels of anxiety and related disorders. In addition, concealment of sexual orientation significantly predicted symptoms of social phobia. Implications are offered for the cognitive and behavioral treatment of anxiety and related disorders in this population.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 3,350 undergraduate students at a large northeastern university enrolled in introductory psychology courses. Due to differences in the number of participants who identified as heterosexual (n = 3,193) relative to the number of participants who identified as a sexual minority (n = 157), we randomly selected a subsample of heterosexual participants (matched on age and gender to sexual minority participants) for all comparisons between sexual minority and heterosexual participants.

Symptom severity measures

Means and standard deviations for participant scores on measures of GAD, social phobia, panic disorder, PTSD, and depression are presented by gender and sexual minority status in Table 1. The overall multivariate model was significant for sexual minority status, F(4, 282) = 8.25, p = .0001, η2 = .105, and gender, F(4, 282) = 5.71, p = .0001, η2 = .075; however, the omnibus interaction between gender and sexual minority status was not significant, F(4, 282) = 1.11, p = .350, η2 = .016. Compared to men, women

Discussion

This study investigated anxiety and related disorders in sexual minority young adults. Sexual minorities reported greater dimensional symptomatology of GAD, social phobia, panic, depression and PTSD and were significantly more likely to reach a clinical level of symptoms for GAD, social phobia, and depression relative to their heterosexual counterparts. Our findings of higher symptoms and clinical levels of multiple anxiety and related disorders in sexual minority young people extends previous

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

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