Depressive symptoms among mostly heterosexual adolescents

Abstract

Background

Mostly heterosexual adolescents experience heightened depressive symptoms compared to heterosexual adolescents, though prior comparisons with other sexual minority adolescents have been inconsistent and rarely used a comprehensive measure of sexual orientation.

Method

U.S. high school adolescents were considered mostly heterosexual if they either (a) self-identified as mostly heterosexual or (b) identified as heterosexual but reported same-gender attraction and/or sexual behavior.

Result

Depressive symptoms among both groups of mostly heterosexual adolescents were higher than exclusively heterosexual adolescents but similar to other sexual minority adolescents.

Conclusion

Mostly heterosexual adolescents may be at risk for depression like their other sexual minority peers.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescence
• mostly heterosexual
• adolescent
• depression
• sexual minority

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the members of the Choukas-Bradley and Widman labs for their assistance with data collection and cleaning. We would also like to specifically thank Uma Balaji, Julia Friedman, Megan Kundra, Kendra Plummer, and Emma Stewart for their assistance with the preparation of this manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank Mitch Prinstein for his assistance with recruitment.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1940700 awarded to Anne J. Maheux. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.