A “social cure” for minority stress? Individual and collective identity strategies on the mental health outcomes of lesbian and gay people

Lesbian and gay (LG) people experience minority stressors, resulting in adverse mental health outcomes. To cope, many LG people engage in individualistic or collectivistic strategies, that is, self-distancing or connecting with their in-group, the LGBTQ+ community. Even though research suggests what may help LG people cope with minority stress, it is less clear how and under which conditions they do so. In this study, we examine how LG people employ individualistic and collectivistic strategies and what that entails for the negative relationship between minority stress and mental health. A total of 199 responses from British LG people were collected via the online crowdsourcing platform Clickworker. A custom mediation model indicated that, for collectivistic strategies, higher levels of minority stress were associated with increased LGBTQ+ community identification, and LGBTQ+ identification was positively related to high LGBTQ+ social support; in turn, LGBTQ+ social support was associated with positive mental health outcomes. For individualistic strategies, results show higher minority stress was related to an increased likelihood of individual mobility, but individual mobility was not associated with mental health outcomes. These findings highlight how collectivistic responses to minority stress might prove more reliable than individualistic ones in enhancing the mental health of LG people.