The Relationship Between Identity-Based Social Support, Victimization, and Mental Health among LGBTQ+ Youth

Abstract

Previous work has demonstrated the importance of social support and the deleterious effects of peer victimization on mental health in LGBTQ+ youth. However, most studies on this topic to date have focused on samples with few trans youth. In this study, we assess the relations between social support, peer victimization, and mental health (anxiety, depression, and positive affect) in a sample of LGBTQ+ youth ages 12-17 (N = 351; M=14.4, SD=1.6) that includes an especially large sample of transgender youth (N=283), allowing us to assess the degree to which these relations hold in that sample. A subset of these youth completed the same measures twice (N = 142; years between responses: M=1.5, SD=0.5), allowing us to assess these relations longitudinally, as well. Consistent with our pre-registered hypotheses, cross-sectional analyses showed social support predicted better mental health, and victimization predicted worse mental health. Unexpectedly, we did not observe a buffering effect: having social support did not reduce the association between victimization and poor mental health. We then explored if changes in social support and victimization over time predicted changes in mental health, with mixed findings. Overall, our findings are consistent with prior research in suggesting that identity-related support and identity-related victimization are associated with LGBTQ+ youth’s well-being.