Social support and internalizing psychopathology among sexual and gender minority individuals: A meta-analysis

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals often suffer from a myriad of stressors within their social environments due to stigma and its outcomes (Meyer, 2003). Conversely, social support may impact SGM individuals' psychological resilience. To quantify the impact of their interpersonal environments, the current preregistered meta-analysis included 253 studies (N = 111,188) that reported associations between social support (i.e., family, peer, partner, school, work) and internalizing psychopathology (i.e., depression, anxiety, nonsuicidal self-injury, suicidality) among SGM samples. Overall, a small, negative association was observed, r = −0.26, with low levels of variance between studies. Larger effects were observed for depression than other measures of psychopathology, r = −0.29, while smaller effects were observed for suicidality, r = −0.17. Smaller effects were observed for samples with a larger share of bisexual individuals, and when a SGM-specific measure was used. Larger effects were observed for European studies performed in areas of greater structural stigma (but not for American studies). The negative association between social support and psychopathology was consistent across an array of demographic factors (e.g., age, gender, % white) and SGM identities (e.g., % gender minority). No evidence of publication bias was observed. These findings suggests that all forms of SGM social support are similarly associated with lower internalizing psychopathology to a small degree, most of all with regards to depression.