Sexual Minority Individuals’ Explanations for the Sexual Orientation Disparity in Depression: Relevance to Their Well-Being and Optimism

Abstract

Despite increased public awareness of the sizeable mental health disparities affecting sexual minority individuals, no research has examined how sexual minorities themselves are affected by this knowledge, how they explain these disparities, and with what impact on their own mental health and outlook. This study asked sexual minority individuals (n = 401, Mage = 34.2) to provide causal attributions for the sexual orientation disparity in depression. Participants’ most commonly endorsed attributions for the disparity involved sexual minority individuals’ interpersonal maltreatment, experiences feeling as if they are the “other, ” and societal/structural stigma. Responses were then categorized into internal (e.g., stress reactions within the person) versus external (e.g., stressful determinants outside of the person) causes, based on these two categories of explanations posited by minority stress theory, and also attributional styles theory, which proposes distinct mental health impacts depending on one’s internal versus external attributions for the causes of negative phenomena. Internal attributions for the disparity were associated with greater self-reported current depression and beliefs that the disparity was larger and would be more permanent, whereas external attributions were associated with greater past, current, and expected future depression, but positive expectations about the treatability of depression in oneself and other sexual minority individuals and optimism that the disparity will not be permanent. This research is the first to join attributional styles theory with health disparities research and motivates future casually informative research that can test ways to communicate about disparities within the affected population in a way that empowers the stigmatized, rather than inducing pessimism.