Emotional well-being, community connectedness protect mental health of sexual minority youth

In sexual minority-identifying youth (SMY), factors at the individual, family, and community levels all have important roles to play in protecting their mental health (MH), a recent study has found.

“In this nationally representative prospective cohort study with 14-year follow-up, emotional well-being, self-esteem, parent connectedness, school connectedness, and caring teachers were protective factors for young adult MH outcomes in youth identifying as sexual minorities,” the researchers said.

The study included 14,317 youth (mean age 15.4 years, 49 percent girls) who had completed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health; of these, 13.5 percent (n=) identified themselves as SMY. MH outcomes included depression, anxiety, and suicidality and were assessed after 14 years of follow-up.

At baseline, depression/suicidality was present in 41 percent of participants but was significantly more common in SMY (52 percent vs 39 percent; p<0.001). The overall prevalence of depression/suicidality dropped to 38 percent at follow-up, an effect driven mostly by decreasing rates in non-SMY participants. In SMY, MH outcomes worsened over time (57 percent vs 35 percent; p<0.001).

At the individual level, regression analysis showed that emotional well-being had a significantly protective role against MH outcomes (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.56, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.41–0.78). The same was true for self-esteem, such that every five-unit increase in self-esteem led to a 0.79-unit drop in the odds of MH outcomes (95 percent CI, 0.66–0.95).

Family connectedness was likewise a significant protective factor against MH outcomes in SMY (aOR, 0.82, 95 percent CI, 0.71–0.95; p=0.009), as were school connectedness (aOR, 0.78, 95 percent CI, 0.66–0.92) and having caring teachers (aOR, 0.76, 95 percent CI, 0.58–0.99).