Psychology Commons^™

Sexual Violence, Identity Centrality, And Mental Health Among Racial And Sexual Minoritized Individuals: An Application Of Cultural Betrayal Trauma Theory, Brettland D. Coolidge

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Sexual violence (SV) is a pressing concern in the United States. SV (i.e., unwanted sexual contact, coercion, and wanted or unwanted penetration of another). Individuals with minoritized sexual, racial/ethnic, and gender identities experience worse psychosocial outcomes than their majority counterparts. People with multiple marginalized identities have been shown to experience traumatic events at greater rates and with significantly different outcomes compared to those with one minoritized identity. Cultural betrayal trauma theory proposes that these differences in mental health outcomes may be explained in part by a shared cultural identity between a SV perpetrator and victim, which is posited to exacerbate …