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The Intersection Of Mental Illness And Queerness: A Quantitative Study, Jennie E. Benjamin

Sociology Dissertations

My dissertation addresses the intersection of queerness and mental illness utilizing Meyer’s minority stress theory, which argues that for sexual minorities, discrimination, stress, and internalized homophobia lead to worse mental health. Specifically, in my dissertation, I extend the minority stress theory by examining a population with two stigmatized identities, sexual minority status and diagnosed mental illness, and by testing if “coming out” or disclosure of stigmatized statuses mediates the modified minority stress theory indicators on two measures of well-being. I developed a broad-topic survey to collect the data. A majority of my sample (N=98) are white women who are bisexual …