The Role of School Social Networks and Norms in Mental Health Disparities Among SGM Youth

• In Event: The School-Based Peer Context of Sexual and Gender Minority Adolescents: International and U.S. Perspectives

Abstract

A growing body of literature documents the challenges experienced by sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth, including frequent school-based victimization and discrimination and resultant mental health challenges (Robinson & Espelage, 2012). Schools can protect SGM youth against mental health problems related to their minority status through SGM-affirming policies and practices (Coulter et al., 2016; Hatzenbuehler et al., 2014). Despite these efforts, general population trends indicate widening mental health disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual youth (Russell & Fish, 2019). It is urgent to investigate alternative school-based influences on SGM youth mental health outcomes.

To that end, there are three overarching aims of the review. The first is to apply a systems framework to understand the effects of SGM-affirming policies and practices (e.g., more inclusive anti-bullying policies) at the setting level. These policies and practices impact the structural features of a school (i.e., the resources of a school and their organization) and the social processes (i.e., social norms, social networks, and participation in activities) that take place within a school (Seidman & Cappella, 2017; Tseng & Seidman, 2007). The structural features and social processes of the school setting, in turn, impact individual outcomes. This exercise highlights school social networks and social norms as potential mediating mechanisms that link SGM-affirming policies and practices at the school level to individual mental health outcomes (see Figure 1).

The second aim is to propose a conceptual model that integrates SGM-affirming policies and practices, network characteristics, social norms, and mental health outcomes of SGM youth (see Figure 2). For the purposes of explicating the model in Figure 2, we limit our discussion to the friendship network of a school and to two types of norms that are particularly relevant for SGM youth mental health, gender role norms and mental health norms. In support of this model, we synthesize the relevant theoretical and empirical evidence to describe how network processes and characteristics, including friendship selection processes and school composition, the structural characteristics of school social networks, SGM youths’ position in the network, and the transmission of norms through the network interact to affect SGM youth mental health outcomes.

The third aim of this review is to discuss implications of this conceptual model for future research and strategies to improve SGM youth mental health. Descriptive research in this area must include more recent multi-school research with complete social network data to understand the associations among school social network structure, SGM youths’ positions within their school social network, the mental health and gender role norms of a school, and SGM youth mental health outcomes. Interventions that leverage the findings from this paper could be designed to (1) bring together students across lines of difference to foster friendships among youth and (2) shift norms for healthy and unhealthy coping strategies within the school social network. These changes in friendship patterns and behavioral norms may translate into shifts in the bases of friendship formation and the potential for positive peer influence in schools and may have particular benefits for SGM youth.

Authors

• Sarah Rosenbach, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elise Cappella, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author