Sexual Minority Status and Psychotic Experiences Among Young Adult College Students in the United States

ABSTRACT

2020–2021 Healthy Minds Study, and used multivariable logistic regression to examine the associations between sexual minority status and psychotic experiences, adjusting for age, gender, and race/ethnicity. We then tested whether psychosocial factors accounted for the association. Sexual minority status was associated with 1.87 times greater odds of having psychotic experiences over the past 12 months (aOR: 1.87; 95% CI: 1.77–1.99; N = 110,551). Several factors mediated the association between sexual orientation and psychotic experiences such as loneliness (26.93%), anxiety (30.90%), depression (33.18%), and marijuana use (13.95%); all factors together accounted for 59.01% of the association between sexual minority status and psychotic experiences. Food insecurity, recent abuse, and discrimination did not significantly mediate the association. Findings should raise clinical awareness that psychotic experiences are more common among sexual minorities than among heterosexuals, which is largely explained by mental health factors, calling for targeted outreach and intervention.

KEYWORDS:

• College
• disparity
• mental health
• psychotic experiences
• sexual orientation

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

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All authors have contributed to the development of this manuscript, and have reviewed and approve of this submission.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2132582

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Funding

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