Mental health literacy in India and Australia and its relationship to attitudes towards LGBT people

ABSTRACT

Research on the mental health of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) often emphasises individual vulnerability to mental health issues. However, attitudes towards LGBT individuals may also contribute to their experiences of minority stress. In the present study, the relationship between mental health literacy (MHL) and attitudes towards LGBT individuals in Australia and India was investigated. Seven-hundred and eleven participants (355 male) from Australia (n = 303) and India (n = 408) completed an online survey which included questionnaires indexing the participants’ MHL and their attitudes towards LGBT individuals. MHL was associated with attitude scores, such that participants with higher levels of MHL tended to report more positive attitudes towards LGBT individuals. These relationships were stronger for Australian participants compared to Indian participants. These findings suggest that minority stress may be intensified for LGBT individuals when the MHL of the people they interact with is low. Alternatively, MHL may signal how willing an individual is to offer mental health support to a LGBT person. The present results also highlight the influence of cultural context on MHL and the need to consider this when examining attitudes towards LGBT individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health literacy
• attitudes
• LGBT
• Australia
• India

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr Deep Jyoti Bhuyan for his valuable insight into Indian culture throughout this research. Dr Bhuyan is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the NICM Health Research Institute, Western Sydney University, Australia.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, RM, upon reasonable request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. LGBT individuals are focused on in this paper; however, the authors would like to acknowledge that the discussion herein likely generalises to other sexual and gender diverse identities. These include, but are not limited to, intersex, non-binary, queer/questioning, demisexual, pansexual, and asexual.

2. Country was coded as 0 for India and 1 for Australia. Education level was coded as 0 for non-degree and 1 for degree holder.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Keats Endowment Fund [G1900092], which is a University of Newcastle Australia Faculty of Science grant. Yeow Khoon Pua's work on the study was supported by a University of Newcastle Vice-Chancellor’s Higher Degree by Research Training Program Scholarship.