Does trouble managing emotions link discrimination to substance use?
LGB adults who reported more family rejection or victimisation had more difficulty regulating emotions, and that difficulty statistically accounted for part of their higher alcohol and drug problems.
Source
The Indirect Effect of Emotion Regulation on Minority Stress and Problematic Substance Use in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Online self-report survey analysed with moderated mediation (discrimination -> emotion regulation difficulties -> substance problems, moderated by sexual orientation).
- N
- N=305 · 305 cisgender lesbian, gay and bisexual US adults retained after exclusions from two online studies.
- Population
- Cisgender lesbian, gay and bisexual adults in the United States recruited online; mostly white and highly educated.
- Outcome
- Problematic alcohol use (SMAST) and problematic drug use (DAST-10), with emotion regulation difficulties (DERS) as mediator.
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
The researchers surveyed 305 lesbian, gay and bisexual adults online about two kinds of minority stress (rejection by family and victimisation such as assault), their difficulties regulating emotions, and screening scores for problem drinking and drug use. They tested whether emotion regulation difficulties carried the link between discrimination and substance problems, and whether this pathway differed for bisexual versus lesbian/gay participants.
What they found
Both family rejection and victimisation had significant indirect effects on problem alcohol and drug use through emotion regulation difficulties, for bisexual and for lesbian/gay participants alike. The indirect pathway did not differ by sexual orientation. Direct links between discrimination and substance problems were stronger for bisexual participants: family rejection directly predicted alcohol and drug problems only in the bisexual group.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Because all measures were collected at one time point, the study cannot show that discrimination causes emotion regulation problems or that these cause substance use; the order could run differently. The sample was not recruited for substance use, so problem scores were low and varied little, and it was mostly white and highly educated. All measures were self-reported online, and transgender and gender non-conforming participants were excluded, so results do not extend to them.
Key terms
- Minority stress
- Extra, chronic stress that members of stigmatised groups experience because of prejudice, rejection and discrimination.
- Emotion regulation
- The processes people use to influence which emotions they have, when, and how they experience and express them.
- Mediation (indirect effect)
- A statistical pattern in which one variable is linked to an outcome partly through a third, intervening variable.
- Moderated mediation
- A test of whether the size of an indirect effect changes depending on a third variable, here sexual orientation.
- Bootstrapped confidence interval
- A range for an effect estimated by repeatedly resampling the data; if it excludes zero, the effect is treated as significant.
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Quiz yourself
What role did emotion regulation difficulties play in the model?
Common questions
Does this show that improving emotion regulation would reduce substance use in LGB people?
Not directly. It identifies emotion regulation as a plausible target, but only intervention or longitudinal studies can test whether changing it changes substance use.
Why were bisexual and lesbian/gay participants compared?
Earlier research found bisexual people report worse mental health and more substance problems, so the authors checked whether the emotion-regulation pathway was stronger for them. It was not.
What counted as minority stress here?
Two subscales of a heterosexist experiences questionnaire: rejection by family of origin and victimisation such as being threatened or hit for being LGB.
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