Protective Effects of Social Support and Self-Esteem on Sexual Minority Young Adults' Mental Health

Existing research has established that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) youths experience higher rates of mental illness. However, fewer studies have examined what influences these disparate outcomes. Meyer's (2003) minority stress theory suggests that social factors, such as social support, and internal resources, such as self-esteem, are important potential moderators that may buffer the detrimental effects of stigma-related stress for sexual minority individuals. This study examined the potential protective effects peer support, parent support, school support, and self-esteem in adolescence in explaining mental health disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual young adults. Mental health outcomes included alcohol consumption, depressive symptoms, delinquency, and suicidal ideation (SI). Data were from waves I (1994-1995) and III (2001-2002) of the Add Health restricted-use dataset, a longitudinal, nationally representative survey of American adolescents. A series of multiple and logistic regressions was conducted to examine whether peer, parent, and school support or self­ esteem in adolescence moderated the relationship between sexual identity and each of the four mental health outcomes at young adulthood, controlling for mental health symptom levels at adolescence. Overall, findings revealed that received peer support in adolescence is a protective factor for 100% homosexual young adults at risk for higher alcohol consumption, and for bisexual young adults at risk for depressive symptoms. Neither of the perceived support variables (i.e., peer and parent) acted as protective factors for increased mental health symptoms among sexual minority individuals in young adulthood after accounting for mental health symptom levels in adolescence. Results suggest the importance of peer support and self-esteem in adolescence in predicting future depressive symptoms and alcohol consumption among sexual minority individuals. Results also indicate that trajectories of alcohol consumption, depressive symptoms, delinquency and SI may differ by sexual identity, suggesting the need for future studies to include multiple sexual identities (e.g., mostly heterosexual).