Trends in Sexual Orientation Disparities in Mental Health Among Dutch Youth

• In Event: Sexual and Gender Minority Youth’s Mental Health: Learning Over Time

Abstract

Research indicates increased risk of poor mental health, including depression and anxiety, among lesbian, gay, and bisexual, or sexual minority youth compared to heterosexual youth (Russell & Fish, 2016). These disparities are often explained by sexual minority youth’s experiences with discrimination and victimization. However, increasing social acceptance of sexual diversity may result in an improvement in sexual minority youth’s lives, and in turn, diminish disparities. Recent studies have examined these disparities in the past decade and show that for some subgroups the presence and size of disparities in, for example, substance use (Fish & Baams, 2018) and suicidality (Peter et al., 2017), may have changed over time. In the current study, we examine disparities in mental health among Dutch sexual minority and heterosexual youth during 2014 to 2018. In addition, we examine whether the presence and size of disparities changed from 2014 to subsequent years.

We utilized data from the annual Dutch Health Survey, including 16-21 year old youth (N = 2,521). Youth were asked about their sexual attraction to men, women, or both, and we used this to infer their sexual minority status (i.e., same- and both-gender/sex attracted versus other-gender/sex attracted). Youth were asked whether they had been “depressed” in the past year, and were presented with five items asking about mental health symptoms in the past 4 weeks, from the Mental Health Inventory 5 (MHI-5; Cuijpers et al., 2009). The MHI-5 can be used as a sum score indicating poor mental health, and as two subscales, indicating risk for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). All regression analyses were conducted in Stata, and included covariates for age, gender/sex, and migration background, and weights to represent the Dutch population.

Logistic regression analyses (see Table 1) showed that, compared to heterosexual youth, sexual minority youth were significantly more likely to have been depressed in the past year, in 2014, 2017, and 2018, but not in 2015 and 2016. Using the sum scale score for mental health symptoms, linear regression analyses showed that, compared to heterosexual youth, sexual minority youth reported poorer mental health in the past 4 weeks, in all survey cycles, except for 2016. Using the MHI-5 risk-scores, logistic regression analyses showed disparities in MDD-risk in all survey cycles, except in 2016, and disparities in GAD-risk, but only in 2014 and 2017. Disparities in depression, mental health symptoms (sum score) and MDD- or GAD-risk did not significantly differ between 2014 and subsequent survey cycles (see Table 1).

Overall, findings from Dutch heterosexual and sexual minority youth showed important cross-sectional disparities in mental health, from 2014 to 2018. In the Netherlands, a country with relatively high social acceptance of sexual diversity, sexual minority youth reported more mental health problems than heterosexual youth. Importantly, the size of these disparities did not differ between 2014 and subsequent years, indicating a stability in the presence and size of sexual orientation disparities in mental health. Implications will be discussed.

Authors

• Laura Baams, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (UG/RUG)
  Presenting Author

• Jessica Fish, University of Maryland - College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Travis Salway, Simon Fraser University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ashleigh Rich, University of British Columbia
  Non-Presenting Author