Coping with minority stress and its impact upon the HIV related attitudes and behavior of gay men

Introduction: The proposed study will seek to test the minority stress buffering theory on the Urban Men's Study to examine how minority stress and coping can affect gay men's attitudes towards HIV infection and their risk behaviors. While minority stress is associated with poor health outcomes, coping resources like social support is associated with positive health outcomes. Minority stress may also have a negative effect upon people's coping resources (social support and social network resources).

Methods: The data used were from the Urban Men's Study Data, which was a telephone survey of MSM from four urban centers (San Francisco; Los Angeles; New York, NY; Chicago, Ill) from 1996-1998. Analysis was conducted upon 2410 gay identified men without current female partners.

Results: Results indicate that gay related harassment and violence was negatively associated with social support (b=-.32 p<=001). HIV negative gay men's resignation to seroconversion and HIV positive men's sense of alienation was negatively associated with social support (b=-.04 p<=001 and b=-.06 p<=001) , and positively associated with gay related harassment and violence (b=.06 p<=02 and b=.12 p<=03). Social support was also negatively associated with the number of men participant's reported having receptive anal sex without a condom (b=-.05 p<=003).

Discussion: Minority stress and its relationship with coping resources like social support could be an important framework in explaining the multiple health disparities experienced by gay men. Not only could gay related stigma and discrimination impact people's health but it may also reduce their ability to cope with stress.