Mental health of same-sex attracted adolescents: Is religion protective?

BACKGROUND

Compared to their heterosexual peers, sexual minority adolescents fare worse on many measures of mental health including depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Religion has been found to be protective among youth generally, but it is unclear how it operates in sexual minority populations. The purpose of this study is assess how religiosity impacts the mental health of same-sex attracted (SSA) adolescents comparing them to those with only opposite sex attraction (OSA) in a nationally representative sample.

METHODS

This study utilizes public-use data from 11-21 year olds who participated in Wave I of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N=5,237). Univariate and bivariate statistics are used to describe the religiosity and mental health (depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts) of SSA youth (7.2%) comparing them to youth with OSA (92.8%). Logistic regression is used to compare groups in adjusted models controlling for relevant socio-demographic factors.

RESULTS

Adolescents with SSA reported significantly more depression, suicidal ideations and suicide attempts than those with only opposite sex attraction (p<.05). Overall, SSA youth had lower mean levels of religiosity than OSA (t=3.78, p<.001). Though religiosity was protective against all three mental health outcomes examined for OSA females (p<.01), and against depression and suicidal ideation for OSA males (p<.05), no effects were found for SSA youth of either sex.

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicate that religiosity has a differential effect on the mental health outcomes of SSA and OSA youth. Further research is needed to understand differing pathways of religious influence on mental health outcomes in adolescent populations.