When Microaggressions Affect LGBTQ Health

by Victoria Ellwood

College of Nursing researchers are looking into ways to reduce the impact of stigma on health for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, an often-overlooked population in research studies. Christina Dyar, PhD’s work focuses on LGBTQ health.

“Much of my work focuses on LGBTQ women, a population that experiences profound disparities in anxiety, depression and substance use disorders, but has received much less research attention than LGBTQ men,” Dyar said. “As cannabis becomes legal in more places, we’ve seen increasing rates of cannabis use disorder, especially among LGB women.” Cannabis use disorder is up to four times more likely to impact LGB women and nonbinary individuals compared to their straight, cisgender peers and may arise as a way to cope with microaggressions, anxiety and depression. This year, the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH/NIDA) awarded Dyar a five-year R01 grant of $3.5 million to conduct the multi-year study delving into the reasons behind the troubling trend and ultimately leading to effective interventions.

“Much of my work focuses on LGBTQ women, a population that experiences profound disparities in anxiety, depression and substance use disorders, but has received much less research attention than LGBTQ men.”
– Christina Dyar, PhD

“One of my goals is to understand the association between experiences of microaggressions and cannabis use. My work is examining how microaggressions can get under the skin, contributing to elevated anxiety, depression and cannabis use, as well as how this pattern unfolds on a daily basis,” said Dyar, who is an assistant professor in the College of Nursing. Microaggressions are indirect or subtle acts of bias an individual might experience or see someone else who shares their identity experience. Dyar’s previous work has linked microaggressions with feelings of anxiety and depression.

At issue, she explained, is that LGB women and nonbinary individuals tend to experience unique kinds of bias and stigma, high rates of sexual harassment and assault and microaggressions on top of the everyday life stressors we all experience. “This has been theorized to contribute to disparities in anxiety, depression and alcohol and cannabis use disorders, but we don’t have a lot of research rigorously testing these associations. I wanted to empirically test these links between experiences of microaggressions and the mental health outcomes.”

Dyar’s NIH-funded study will kick off in January and will focus on a racially and geographically diverse population of young adults, ages 18 to 25. “That age group is where we are seeing the highest rates of cannabis use disorder,” she said.

Six hundred participants will take part in the study for two-and-a-half years: 400 LGB women and nonbinary individuals, and 200 heterosexual women. “Participants will tell us about their experiences – with microaggressions, anxiety, depression and cannabis use – in daily surveys for two weeks. Six months later, they’ll do the same thing, and six months later, again,” she explained. “So we will get little windows into their everyday experiences and we can look at how daily risk processes may change over the two-and-a-half years they’re in the study.

“The ultimate goal is to inform interventions to reduce the impact of stigma on health,” Dyar added. “I’m hoping this work can help to find some of the underlying mechanisms that contribute to the link between microaggressions and substance use. If we can identify some of these mechanisms, we may be able to develop new interventions that aim to intervene in these processes by teaching skills for effectively coping with microaggressions and in turn helping reduce the rates of cannabis use disorder.”

Co-investigators joining Dyar in the study include Debra Kaysen, PhD, of Stanford University, and Christine Lee, PhD, and Isaac Rhew, PhD, of University of Washington.

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Sexual and Gender Minority Research Collaborative

Ethan Morgan, PhD, recently took a perplexing problem and turned it around into a university-wide resource for researchers. Morgan, assistant professor in the College of Nursing whose research interests include LGBTQIA+ health, HIV and STDs, founded the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Collaborative, which launched July 1. This new initiative was created in collaboration with and is supported by the College of Nursing’s Center for Research and Health Analytics.

“I found it was difficult to find other people who were doing research on sexual and gender minorities at Ohio State. It was hard to even do a ‘search’ for information,” Morgan explained. “So we put this in the works as a way to bring attention to all of the research being done at Ohio State on sexual and gender minority health, and to connect people with one another, both researchers and the local community.”

Susie Breitenstein, PhD, associate dean for research and innovation in the College of Nursing said, “We are delighted that this new collaborative will bring researchers and community members together to engage in the important work addressing the health inequities in the sexual and gender minority population.”

The new collaborative serves as a way to engage in both research and programmatic activities in ways that will improve sexual and gender minority health. “As a university-wide resource, it is crucial to work collaboratively across colleges to achieve this goal,” Morgan added.

The collaborative is hosted by the College of Nursing, but is meant to loop in research from all corners of the university. The website-based resource focuses on numerous areas of study, including identity and self-expression, mental and physical health, discrimination and intersectionality, alongside training the next generation of scientists. Researchers already represent many areas, including aging, adolescents and youth, cancer, mental health, family issues, sociology, demographics, substance use and public health.

A diverse leadership team, along with affiliated members, affiliated centers and local resources, forms a broad resource for researchers from throughout Ohio State and the central Ohio community.