Estresse de minoria, sintomas emocionais e violência entre parceiros íntimos em pessoas LGBT no contexto brasileiro

Abstract

In the last decades, psychologists have been progressively interested in studying the effects of a discriminatory environment on mental health and relationship quality of sexual and gender minorities. The objective of this thesis was to investigate how minority stress is related to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, and intimate partner violence (IPV) in Brazil. In Article I, we compared types of IPV and emotional symptoms among LGBT people and investigated relations with sociodemographic variables in 315 participants ranging from 18 to 62 years old (M = 28,46; SP = 8,31). Instruments were sociodemographic and intimate relationship questions, as well the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The most frequent IPV type was psychological both when suffered (72,1%) and perpetrated (71,4%), followed by physical (24,8%). The most prevalent symptom was stress. Group differences show inequalities related to social markers and socioeconomic characteristics. In Article II, we translated and adapted The LGBT Stress Measure (Outland, 2016) for the Brazilian context. The resulting instrument was called Escala de Estresse de Minoria LGBT (EEM-LGBT) and it is composed of 24 items distributed into seven dimensions, as the original scale: (1) discrimination events; (2) victimization events; (3) microaggressions; (4) identity concealment; (5) rejection anticipation; (6) internalized stigma; (7) community connectedness. A factor analysis with the answers of 448 participants ranging from 18 to 62 years old (M = 27,3; SD = 7,9; Mdn = 25) showed good fit indexes for the model of seven factors (χ2/gl = 2,21; CFI = 0,92; RMSEA [90% CI] = 0,05; GFI = 0,91; AGFI = 0,88; TLI = 0,91; SRMR = 0,06). Criterium validity was established with correlations with measures from Protocolo de Avaliação de Estresse de Minoria (PEM-LGB-BR; Costa et al., 2020). In Article III, the objective was to investigate the best combination of minority stressors to explain the occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. Instruments were: EEM-LGBT, CTS2, and DASS-21. Although significant correlations were considered too low and we were not able to attend statistical requirements to predict IPV as outcome, it was possible to identify the combination of variables that best explained the occurrence of emotional symptoms: internalized stigma, rejection anticipation, victimization experiences, low community connectedness, income and schooling. We conclude that proximal minority stressors, caused by distal stressors, intertwine with social markers of difference to explain different mental health outcomes in this population.