Abstract
Purpose
The mental health and victimization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning
(LGBTQ) youth have garnered media attention with the “It Gets Better Project.” Despite
this popular interest, there is an absence of empirical evidence evaluating a possible
developmental trajectory in LGBTQ distress and the factors that might influence distress
over time.
Methods
This study used an accelerated longitudinal design and multilevel modeling to examine
a racially/ethnically diverse analytic sample of 231 LGBTQ adolescents aged 16–20 years
at baseline, across six time points, and over 3.5 years.
Results
Results indicated that both psychological distress and victimization decreased across
adolescence and into early adulthood. Furthermore, time-lagged analyses and mediation
analyses suggested that distress was related to prior experiences of victimization,
with greater victimization leading to greater distress. Support received from parents,
peers, and significant others was negatively correlated with psychological distress
in the cross-sectional model but did not reach significance in the time-lagged model.
Conclusions
Analyses suggest that psychological distress might “get better” when adolescents encounter
less victimization and adds to a growing literature indicating that early experiences
of stress impact the mental health of LGBTQ youth.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 10, 2015
Accepted:
October 22,
2014
Received:
July 25,
2014
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
