Minority Stress and Mental Health: A Review of the Literature

2021/11/23 by Charles P. Hoy-Ellis, Charles P. Hoy‐Ellis · 283 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Clinical psychology #Gender studies #Heterosexism #Human sexuality #LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy #Lesbian #Mental health #Minority stress #Psychology #Psychotherapist #Racial and Ethnic Identity Research #Sexual identity #Sexual minority #Sexual orientation #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Sociology #Stressor #Transgender

paper · doi:10.1080/00918369.2021.2004794

published in Journal of Homosexuality 70(5), 806-830 (Taylor & Francis)

openalex publication_date 2021/11/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations experience significant health disparities, theorized to result from LGBT specific minority stressors. The fully conceptualized Minority Stress Model was published more than 15 years ago. Minority stressors include external conditions and events, such as discrimination and victimization. Internal minority stressors include expectations of rejection and discrimination, concealment of minority identity, and internalizations of negative dominant cultural attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, and values. Connection to sexual and gender minority communities is theorized to moderate the effects of minority stressors. In this integrative review, I examine two decades of research on minority stress. Based on this review, I highlight strengths and limitations of the model, and suggest next steps for moving minority stress research forward.

Citations

• The Forms and Mechanisms of Stress Proliferation: The Case of AIDS Caregivers
• The Complexity of Intersectionality
• Minority Stress and Mental Health in Gay Men
• Demonstrating the Importance and Feasibility of Including Sexual Orientation in Public Health Surveys: Health Disparities in the Pacific Northwest
• Stress, Coping, and Social Support Processes: Where Are We? What Next?
• Mechanisms Linking Social Ties and Support to Physical and Mental Health
• Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence.
• The Life Course as Developmental Theory

Cited by

• Elements of Minority Stress and Resilience in LGBTQ+ Students’ Experience of Education
• Groomers, gays, and gender ideology: Why the anti-LGBTQIA+ legislative backlash is a moral panic and why criminologists should care
• The Effect of Ethnic Microaggression on Integration in Syrian University Students in Türkiye: The Serial Mediation of Interracial Stress and Psychological Distress
• Beyond stigma: Clinician bias in contraceptive counseling to sexual and gender minority youth
• The role of depression and anxiety in experiencing and inflicting ostracism: A cross-national perspective
• Coming out as Roma. Minority stress, multisystemic resilience, and identity among Roma people in Germany
• Technology-facilitated sexual violence among sexual and gender minority youth: The moderating role of digital resilience

Related

• Minority Stress and Mental Health in Gay Men
• Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence.
• A developmentally informed adaptation of minority stress for sexual minority adolescents
• Couple-level Minority Stress: An Examination of Same-sex Couples’ Unique Experiences
• Health disparities between genderqueer, transgender, and cisgender individuals: An extension of minority stress theory.