Social Support as a Mediator of Anti-Bisexual Prejudice and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms

ABSTRACT

Among sexual minorities, bisexual individuals experience higher rates of victimization and symptoms of PTSD than their lesbian and gay peers as well as heterosexual individuals. Despite these disparities, little work has examined factors contributing to PTSD symptoms among bisexual adults. The current study examined the associations between bisexual-specific minority stress and PTSD symptoms in a sample of adults with bisexual orientation and tested social support as a potential mediator of this association. Participants were 488 adults (378 cisgender women, 49 cisgender men, 61 transgender individuals), ages 18 to 66 years, with bisexual orientation based on identity and/or attraction to multiple genders. Greater anti-bisexual prejudice was associated with greater PTSD symptoms (β = 0.16) and lower social support (β = −.16), while accounting for sociodemographics and sexual identity-based victimization. Social support was associated with lower PTSD symptoms (β = −.25), while accounting for sociodemographics, sexual identity-based victimization, and anti-bisexual prejudice. Mediation analyses indicated that anti-bisexual prejudice was indirectly associated with greater PTSD symptoms through lower social support. Addressing bisexual-specific minority stress and its role in diminishing social support for bisexual individuals represents a critical component of trauma-informed research and intervention development in the bisexual community.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-bisexual prejudice
• ptsd
• insidious trauma
• trauma
• minority stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹We also summed the total number of symptoms less conservatively. We counted the total number of symptoms participants reported experiencing at least very little of the time in order to count the total number of symptoms endorsed (not endorsed = none of the time; endorsed = endorsing very little of the time to most or all of the time). Based on this scoring and the 4-symptom and more conservative 6-symptom cutoffs, 75.6% and 57.9% of the sample met criteria for probable PTSD, respectively. Since this was a significant number, we decided to select a more conservative approach.

²To ascertain whether anti-bisexual prejudice specifically from heterosexual individuals and anti-bisexual prejudice from lesbian and gay individuals had different associations with PTSD symptoms, we tested each as separate predictors in two different mediation models. Similar to our results, they each had indirect effects on PTSD symptoms through lower social support. Due to the sociodemographic characteristics of our sample, we conducted a sensitivity analysis for cisgender women in the sample. Our mediation model results were also consistent with the reported findings when the analyses were restricted to cisgender women.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.