Co‐occurring daily minority stressors and dissociation among trauma‐exposed sexual minority women, transgender, and nonbinary people

Sexual minority women, transgender people, and nonbinary (SMW/TNB) people experience disproportionately high rates of traumatic stressors (e.g., child abuse, sexual violence), which are associated with adverse trauma-related mental health outcomes, such as dissociation. SMW/TNB people also experience ongoing stressors related to their minoritized sexual and/or gender identities (e.g., discrimination). Dissociation has been associated with minority stressors in studies primarily using single-time point, cross-sectional approaches. Reliance on single-time point approaches may obscure how minority stressors and trauma-related outcomes, like dissociation, covary within individuals and unfold over time. We conducted a secondary analysis of data from a 14-day daily diary study with trauma-exposed SMW/TNB participants (N = 57) to examine whether variations in daily minority stressors were associated with same-day fluctuations in dissociation. Results indicated minority stressors and dissociation significantly covaried over the 14-day study period. Multilevel models showed that participants' reports of higher-than-average daily minority stressors were associated with same-day reports of higher-than-average dissociative symptoms, B = 0.24, 95% CI [0.07, 0.41], p = .007. Participants also reported small decreases in dissociation levels over the study period, B = -0.05, 95% CI [-0.08, -0.02], p = .004. The findings highlight the importance of considering the health impacts of consistent state elevations in dissociation associated with minority stressors for SMW/TNB people. Future time-varying approaches should investigate temporal sequencing of minority stressors and dissociation, assess whether minority stressors relate to dissociation independent of trauma exposure, and explore whether trauma exposure characteristics (e.g., identity-relatedness of trauma) moderate this association.