Short CommunicationMinority stress is longitudinally associated with alcohol-related problems among sexual minority women☆
Section snippets
Current study
We examined the prospective association between minority stress and alcohol use as well as negative drinking consequences in young adult SMW to extend previous cross-sectional research. As drinking risk is highest during young adulthood, it is of particular import to examine alcohol use during this critical developmental phase. We hypothesized minority stress would be prospectively associated with increased alcohol use and consequences.
Participants and procedures
Participants were recruited nationally via Craigslist and Facebook online advertisements, and upon recruitment were routed to a website showing an informational statement. Those who consented received an online screening assessment (n = 4119). Eligibility criteria were met by 1877 participants and included: 1) U.S. residence, 2) valid e-mail address, 3) age 18 to 25, and 4) self-identified as lesbian or bisexual. Participants were retained in the study if they changed or omitted their reported
Results
As shown in Table 1, baseline typical drinks per week and drinking consequences were highly correlated (ρ = 0.68). Minority stress was weakly correlated with typical drinking (ρ = 0.07) and moderately correlated with drinking consequences (ρ = 0.16). At baseline, 26.5% of women reported no drinking and 25.0% reported no drinking consequences. Over the 3 follow-up waves, the proportion of women reporting no drinking was similar compared to baseline (25.6%), but the likelihood of reporting no
Discussion
The current study extends research regarding the association between minority stress and drinking among SMW by focusing on a critical developmental phase for both drinking behavior and sexual identity formation. Previous research has linked minority stress experiences with increased drinking consequences in sexual minorities (Meyer, 2013). This study supported these previous findings by revealing a prospective relationship between SMW's minority stress and later drinking consequences. Contrary
Role of funding sources
Funding for this study was provided by NIAAA grant R01AA018292 (PI: Kaysen, D. L.). Manuscript preparation was partially supported by NIMH grant T32 MH18869 (PIs Kilpatrick, D. G., & Danielson, C. K.) and the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Academic Affiliations Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment (Dr. Wilson). NIAAA, NIMH, and the Department of Veterans Affairs had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing
Contributors
Dr. Kaysen designed the study and wrote the protocol. Drs. Kaysen and Wilson conducted literature searches and provided summaries of previous research studies. Dr. Rhew conducted the statistical analysis. Drs. Wilson, Gilmore, Rhew, and Ms. Hodge collaboratively wrote the original submission of the manuscript and all authors contributed to and have approved the revised manuscript.
Conflict of interest
All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
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Cited by (61)
Exposure to interpersonal stigma enhances the effectiveness of a culturally adapted personalized normative feedback alcohol intervention for sexual minority women
2022, Addictive BehaviorsCitation Excerpt :The majority of this work has been informed by Meyer's (2003) sexual minority stress framework, which posits that higher rates of substance use among sexual minorities are consequences of possessing a stigmatized, socially disadvantaged sexual minority identity. Among the many forms of stigma explored in relation to alcohol use among SMW, numerous studies have documented robust, direct links between drinking and experience of negative alcohol-related consequences and exposure to distal sexual minority stressors including prejudice, violence, and harassment, which operate at the interpersonal level (e.g., Lehavot & Simoni, 2011; Lewis et al., 2017; McNair et al., 2016; Slater et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2016). As encounters with these interpersonal forms of stigma are most prevalent among SMW who openly identify as LBQ (e.g., Meyer, 2003) and these sexual identities also describe the types of SMW most likely to take part in alcohol interventions advertised in LBQ community settings, it is critical to understand the potential impact of such stigma experiences on evidence-based, intervention strategies developed for non-stigmatized populations (Layland et al., 2020).
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2022, American Journal of Preventive MedicineCitation Excerpt :The authors hypothesize the existence of disparities by sex and SI/RE both separately and at their intersections, with male, bisexual, and Hispanic/Latinx youth experiencing a heightened prevalence of alcohol use at school. Moreover, the authors would expect school-based polyvictimization to attenuate any excess odds of alcohol use at school among SM/REM youth.23–32 All study activities were classified as not human subjects research by the IRB at Northwestern University.
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This research was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01AA018292; PI: Kaysen, D. L.). Manuscript preparation was partially supported by T32 MH18869 (PIs Kilpatrick, D. G., & Danielson, C. K.) and the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Academic Affiliations Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment (Dr. Wilson). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the VA or the United States government or any of the institutions with which the authors are affiliated.