Unhealthy closets, discriminatory dwellings: The mental health benefits and costs of being open about one's sexual minority status

Alexandra Suppes,Jojanneke Van Der Toorn,Christopher T Begeny

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114286

Alexandra Suppes, Jojanneke Van Der Toorn + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114286

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Abstract

RationaleWith a concealable stigmatized identity, sexual minorities not only face discrimination but the burden of deciding when to be open about their sexuality. What are the mental health costs and benefits to openness about sexual minority status? On the one hand, openness fosters integration within the LGBTQ + community (yielding downstream benefits), but it also heightens perceptions of discrimination towards oneself and the group at large (yielding downstream costs for mental health). ObjectivePrevious research has focused on openness as reflecting either a cost or a benefit to sexual minorities’ mental health, resulting in apparent conflict. We propose an integrated view of openness as leading to both costs and benefits that work in tandem to steer mental health. MethodsIn two pre-registered studies with nearly 4000 ethnically diverse, sexual minority participants, we propose a theoretically-driven serial mediation model to test opposing mediating mechanisms that operate on subjective wellbeing and mental health. Specifically, we determine how the relationship between openness about sexual minority status fosters LGBTQ + identity importance, community integration, and perception of discrimination. ResultsBeing more (vs. less) open strengthens LGBTQ identity importance, facilitating integration in the LGBTQ + community, which benefits mental health. However, openness and strengthened identity importance simultaneously prompt increased perceptions of discrimination, the burden of which adversely affects mental health. Together these opposing forces explain the weak association between greater openness and mental health – an association that indicates, overall, that openness does have a net benefit for LGBTQ + individuals’ mental health. ConclusionsBy identifying opposing mechanisms that underlie the relationship between openness and mental health, we have provided a more integrated perspective on the role that openness plays on sexual minorities’ mental health. Openness is associated with stronger group identity importance, greater community integration, and heightened perception that the group (and self) face discrimination.

Highlights

As members of a stigmatized group, sexual minority individuals face unique challenges in their day-to-day life that lead to increased stress (Meyer, 2003; Pachankis, 2007)
We examined the mental health and subjective well-being implications of increased openness about sexual minority status, and the degree to which these relationships are explained by (a) increased LGBTQ + community integration, and (b) perceptions of discrimination towards sexual minorities
We assumed that our three mediators operated in a casual chain: That is, openness operated on identity importance (M1), which in turn operated on both community integration (M2) and perceived discrimination (M3)

Summary

Introduction

As members of a stigmatized group, sexual minority individuals (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer) face unique challenges in their day-to-day life that lead to increased stress (Meyer, 2003; Pachankis, 2007). Given the ubiquitous nature of intolerance, some individuals are not open about their sexual minority status (i.e., they remain “in the closet”) in an effort to minimize personal experiences with discrimination and, protect themselves from its harmful consequences. Concealing sexual minority status has both been found to be unrelated as well as positively and negatively related to mental health (Pachankis et al, 2020). We examined the mental health and subjective well-being implications of increased openness about sexual minority status, and the degree to which these relationships are explained by (a) increased LGBTQ + community integration (having positive implications for health and well-being), and (b) perceptions of discrimination towards sexual minorities (having negative implications). We examined how both increased LGBTQ + community integration and perceptions of discrimination can arise from (c) enhanced importance of one’s identity as a sexual mi nority. We hope to paint a more nuanced picture of how being open can incur benefits (and costs) to sexual minorities and why this may be the case (see Fig. 1 for a conceptual model)

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