Minority stress, resilience and mental health in binary and nonbinary transgender individuals
2022 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (professional degree), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Elevated levels of mental health issues in transgender communities has been consistently documented by years of research. However, less is known about what causes and buffers against mental distress. Considereing the breadth of the transgender umbrella, even less is known about the variations in experiences of mental distress and its causes between different subgroups. Guided by the gender minority stress model, this thesis aimed to contribute to existing research about causes of and buffers against mental distress in the transgender population, and extend said research by investigating transgender individuals with more binary and nonbinary aligned gender identities independently. Data was gathered by the Norwegian study "Kjønn, helse og medborgersskap", and variables measuring distal stressors (sexual assault, discrimination), proximal stressors (avoidance of psychiatric healthcare due to fear of discrimination, concealment), resilience factors (having a partner, community engagement) and mental health outcomes (depressive mood, incongruence-based shame, non-suicidal self-harm) were selected. These were studied for the binary and nonbinary samples using cross-tabulations, bivariate analyses, regression analyses, and path analyses including mediation and moderation analyses. The findings indicate significant effects of distal stressors in both the nonbinary and binary sample. Mediating effects are found by both proximal stressors in the binary sample, while none are found in the nonbinary sample. Having a partner is found to moderate the effect of sexual assault on incongruence-based shame in the binary sample, while still none are found in the nonbinary sample. The models for the binary and nonbinary sample proved to look substantially different, especially in the variables having a partner, concealment, sexual assualt and community engagement.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022.
Keywords [en]
Minority stress, gender minority stress, nonbinary, transgender, mental health
National Category
Psychology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-499125OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-499125DiVA, id: diva2:1745593
Subject / course
Psychology
Educational program
Psykologprogrammet
Supervisors
Examiners
2023-03-232023-03-232023-03-23Bibliographically approved