David M Frost

University College London | UCL · Department of Social Science

This paper presents an integrative review of current and classic theory and research on social stigma and its consequences for the socially stigmatized. Specific attention is paid to stigma-related processes surrounding race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. The origins and perpetration of social stigma are discussed alongside perspectives...

Drawing from 2 largely isolated approaches to the study of social stress—stress proliferation and minority stress—the authors theorize about stress and mental health among same-sex couples. With this integrated stress framework, they hypothesized that couple-level minority stressors may be experienced by individual partners and jointly by couples a...

Minority stress refers to a conceptual model that describes stressors embedded in the social position of sexual minority individuals as causes of health-related conditions, such as mental disorders, psychological distress, physical disorders, health behaviors (e.g., smoking, condom use), and, more generally, a sense of well-being. The minority stre...

Objective: The extent to which the outcome of the European Union referendum ("Brexit") has affected the mental health of migrants living in the United Kingdom has been the subject of much speculation. However, no empirical attempts to examine the mental health impact of the Brexit vote have been made. Through the combination of structural stigma a...

The minority stress model has been influential in guiding research on sexual and gender minority health and well-being in psychology and related social and health sciences. Minority stress has theoretical roots in psychology, sociology, public health, and social welfare. Meyer provided the first integrative articulation of minority stress in 2003 a...

Trans men often face discrimination in the hiring process. However, it remains unclear whether the disclosure of gender identity and perceived masculinity during transition play a role in first impressions and perceived job suitability of trans male applicants. Across two studies ( N = 332), we examined how cisgender heterosexual participants perce...

The goal of this study is to understand the extent to which a diverse group of sexual and gender minorities understood the landmark Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality as personally impacting them. Prominent lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) figures have argued that marriage is an oppressive institution and that...

Same‐sex couples continue to experience social stigma, which can have negative consequences for the quality of their relationships. The current study combined minority stress theory with closeness discrepancy theory in an examination of how the production of disjunctures between actual and ideal experiences of closeness (i.e., closeness discrepanci...

Emerging studies focus on minority stressors emanating from society’s stigmatization of particular relationship forms (i.e., couple-level minority stressors). The present study examines how same-sex couples experience one such couple-level minority stressor: limitations to participation in families of origin. Qualitative data are drawn from a sub-s...

Purpose: This study employed an intersectional framework to examine impact of inequalities related to sexual minority (SM) and ethnic minority (EM) identities in risk for health, well-being, and health-related behaviors in a nationally representative sample. Methods: Participants included 9789 (51% female) adolescents aged 17 years from the U.K.-w...

This study examined sexual identity and birth cohort differences in social support and its association with well-being, using a longitudinal national probability sample of 706 cisgender and non-binary sexual minority individuals from the USA. The data allowed for extensive descriptions of perceived social support and support networks across subgrou...

Purpose: This study examined the health profile of a national probability sample of three cohorts of sexual minority people, and the ways that indicators of health vary among sexual minority people across age cohorts and other defining sociodemographic characteristics, including sexual identity, gender identity, and race/ethnicity. Methods: The Gen...

Population health research has consistently demonstrated that sexual and gender minority populations (e.g., individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender nonbinary) are at greater risk for negative health outcomes relative to heterosexual and cisgender populations [1,2]. Sexual and gender minority populations face health i...

This study examined the extent to which social stress stemming from a stigmatized social status (i.e., minority stress) was associated with three domains of health in younger as compared with older age cohorts of sexual minority individuals. Data were analyzed from the Generations Study, a longitudinal study using a probability sample ( N = 1518) o...

Transgender and nonbinary people’s life experiences are highly heterogenous and shaped by broader structural and cultural forces. We analyze experiences identified on lifeline interviews from 87 transgender and nonbinary adults in Atlanta, New York City, and San Francisco. We find that the type, timing, and relative importance of these experiences...

Autistic people report greater comfort socialising and easier communication with each other. Despite autism being stereotypically associated with lack of social motivation, an autistic community has been described briefly in the literature but is not well understood. Autistic community connectedness may play a role in promoting wellbeing for autist...

Lay abstract: A sense of being connected to other autistic people has been reported anecdotally. Friendships and connectedness may be important to autistic people and beneficial for their wellbeing. Our research aimed to understand the autistic community by interviewing 20 autistic people about their experiences of being connected to other autisti...

Sexual and gender minority individuals have substantially higher risk for mental ill-health, poorer wellbeing, and report higher rates of adverse health-related behaviours. Most of this evidence comes from studies conducted on White individuals, especially in the European context. Less is known about health and wellbeing in those individuals who id...

Objective: This study examined whether positive changes in social attitudes and policies surrounding sexual minority relationships have translated to diminished deleterious effects of minority stress on relationship quality. Background: Sexual minority emerging adults now come of age at a time of greater equality and acceptance than previous gen...

Relationship identities are established through romantic interactions and informed by sociohistorical context. The associations between lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identities and identities in other domains, including relationship identities, have yet to receive sufficient attention from researchers. In this exploratory study, through a qualit...

Closeness is often considered synonymous with better quality romantic relationships. However, individual differences exist in the degree of closeness people desire in their relationships. This study examined the implications that discrepancies between actual and ideal closeness have for relationship quality in romantic couples. A questionnaire was...

This chapter focuses on the development of sexual orientations and identities among sexual minority emerging adults, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, and other non-heterosexual sexual identities. The importance of sociohistorical context when examining sexual orientations and identity development is considered in explaining why eme...

Aims To examine inequalities related to dual sexual- and ethnic-identities in risk for health, wellbeing, and health-related behaviours in a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Methods 9,789 adolescents (51% female) aged 17 years from the UK-wide Millennium Cohort Study, with data on self-identified sexual- and ethnic-identities. Adole...

Autistic people report greater comfort socialising and easier communication with each other. Despite autism being stereotypically associated with lack of social motivation, an autistic community has been described briefly in the literature but is not well understood. Autistic community connectedness (ACC) may play a role in promoting wellbeing for...

Sexual minority emerging adults are more likely to engage in suicidal ideation than their heterosexual counterparts. Experiences of homophobic violence are associated with suicidal ideation. Yet, the specific mechanisms linking homophobic violence to suicidal ideation remain unclear. Entrapment and social belongingness were tested to determine thei...

Within the context of low-resource projects, both limited on time and resources, it can be difficult to incorporate equitable research methods, such as community-based participatory research. For LBGTQ+ research, there are similar barriers, with the need for health research projects that support community-led projects and centre LGBTQ+ voices throu...

During the past 50 years, there have been marked improvement in the social and legal environment of sexual minorities in the United States. Minority stress theory predicts that health of sexual minorities is predicated on the social environment. As the social environment improves, exposure to stress would decline and health outcomes would improve....

Background The health and wellbeing of sexual minorities is adversely impacted by a set of factors collectively known as minority stress. Recently, negative campaigns preceding gay-rights referenda have put further pressure on sexual minorities. However, active participation in political campaigns is expected to foster wellbeing. This study explore...

Voice‐based sexual orientation (SO) judgements can prompt group‐based discrimination. However, the relationships between stigmatization and essentialist beliefs about vocal cues to SO have not been researched. Two studies examined heterosexuals’ and gay men’s and lesbian women’s essentialist beliefs about voice as a cue of SO to uncover essentialis...

This study explored familiarity with, attitudes toward, uptake and discontinuation of PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) among a national probability sample of gay and bisexual men. PrEP is one of the most effective biomedical HIV prevention strategies; however, use among gay and bisexual men remains low within the United States. This study used a nat...

There are many different perspectives for understanding autism. These perspectives may each convey different levels of stigma for autistic individuals. This qualitative study aimed to understand how autistic individuals make sense of their own autism and experience the stigma attached to autism. The study used critical grounded theory tools. Partic...

Psychological science informed recent policy changes granting increased rights for same-sex couples. Understanding that the link between science and policy goes both ways, how should policy inform the next generation of research concerning same-sex couples and sexual minority individuals? This article presents ways that psychological research influ...

Background: Sexual minority populations in the United States have persistently higher rates of cigarette use than heterosexuals, partially driven by exposure to minority stressors (e.g., discrimination and victimization). Little is known about cigarette use across cohorts of sexual minority adults who came of age in distinctly different sociopolit...

There are many different perspectives for understanding autism. These perspectives may each convey different levels of stigma for autistic individuals. This qualitative study aimed to understand how autistic individuals make sense of their own autism and experience the stigma attached to autism. The study used critical grounded theory tools. Partic...

Sexual minority people face greater risk for compromised sexual health than their heterosexual peers, yet school-based sexuality education often excludes them. Little is known about whether or how sexual minority people’s sexuality education experiences have varied across sociohistorical contexts of rapid social change in both sexuality education a...

The last two decades have witnessed a tremendous amount of social and policy changes pertaining to same-sex relationships. However, it is important to recognise that the vast majority of countries across the globe do not legally recognise same-sex couples, and same-sex relationships continue to be stigmatised, even in countries that provide equal r...

A lack of consistency in terminology is further complicated by parsed language and nuanced synonyms that could otherwise unify as refined subdimensions and psychometrics. Additional considerations for future research should address definitions of resilience and vulnerability that focus on individuals actions, or perceived abilities to act, instead...

Purpose: Sampling lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people to recruit a national probability sample is challenging for many reasons, including the low base rate of LGB people in the population. To address this challenge, researchers have relied on diverse approaches to sampling LGB people. We aimed to test an innovative method to assemble a U.S. nat...

Existing social stress frameworks largely conceive of stress as emanating from individual experience. Recent theory and research concerning minority stress have focused on same-sex couples’ experiences of both eventful and chronic stressors associated with being in a stigmatized relationship, including having ongoing or episodic fears of discrimina...

We simultaneously examined the effects of individual- and couple-level minority stressors on mental health among people in same-sex relationships. Individual-level minority stressors emerge from the stigmatization of sexual minority individuals; couple-level minority stressors emerge from the stigmatization of same-sex relationships. Dyadic data fr...

In this study, the authors analyze data from Project SHARe, a mixed-methods study of same-sex couples in two cities, Atlanta and San Francisco. This study considers both past experiences of parenthood and marriage among same-sex couples, as well as what same-sex couples anticipate will occur regarding their own future experiences of parenthood and...

Interviewing is considered a key form of qualitative inquiry in psychology that yields rich data on lived experience and meaning making of life events. Interviews that contain multiple components informed by specific epistemologies have the potential to provide particularly nuanced perspectives on psychological experience. We offer a methodological...

The ongoing civil war in Syria has created 6.3 Million Syrian refugees and 3.6 million of these refugees now live in Turkey. Emerging research on refugee integration in general and on Syrian refugees in Turkey, however, tends to focus on the experiences of Turkish citizens about refugees rather than examining the experiences Syrian refugees concern...

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with Truvada has emerged as an increasingly common approach to HIV prevention among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. This study examined generational differences and similarities in narrative accounts of PrEP among a diverse sample of 89 gay and bisexual men in the U.S. Over 50% of men in the older...

Highlights Economic precarity was associated with poorer health among LGBTQ & GNC youth. This association was partially explained by minority stress and activism. Minority stress was linked to poorer heath, but also heightened activism. Engagement in activism was associated with fewer health problems. These associations varied based on intersection...

Minority stress—in the form of experiences of prejudice and discrimination—can have negative consequences on individuals in same-sex relationships. However, little is known about the ways in which members of same-sex couples make meaning of minority stress, especially in the context of newly formed relationships that may be most vulnerable to minor...

This article investigates the relationship between exposure to structural injustice, experiences of social discrimination, psychological well being, physical health, and engagement in activist solidarities for a large, racially diverse and inclusive sample of 5,860 LGBTQ/Gender Expansive youth in the United States. Through a participatory action re...

This article investigates the relationship between exposure to structural injustice, experiences of social discrimination, psychological well being, physical health, and engagement in activist solidarities for a large, racially diverse and inclusive sample of 5,860 LGBTQ/Gender Expansive youth in the United States. Through a participatory action re...

Bisexual individuals experience poorer mental health than other sexual minority individuals. One explanation for this is that biphobia predisposes bisexual individuals to have a more ambiguous sexual identity and fewer opportunities for stress-ameliorating forms of coping and support. This study explores sexual identity and sexual identity dimensio...

Due to the stigmatization of their relationships, people in same-sex couples are at risk for exposure to forms of social stress that those in different-sex couples are not. This chapter discusses how these “couple-level minority stressors,” which may be individually experienced as well as jointly experienced with a partner, may have deleterious eff...

Recognition of sexual and gender diversity in the 21st century challenges normative assumptions of intimacy that privilege heterosexual monogamy and the biological family unit, presume binary cisgender identities, essentialize binary sexual identities, and view sexual or romantic desire as necessary. We propose a queer paradigm to study relationshi...

Research into autism and mental health has traditionally associated poor mental health and autism as inevitably linked. Other possible explanations for mental health problems among autistic populations have received little attention. As evidenced by the minority disability movement, autism is increasingly being considered part of the identities of...

This chapter examines the microaggressions literature with the own scholarship on how structural violence moves under the skin of young people and transforms into social action. It draws not only from microaggression theory but also from broader frameworks of minority stress theory and studies on everyday discrimination. The chapter provides a fram...

This study examined HIV testing and use, familiarity, and attitudes toward pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among HIV-negative gay and bisexual men in the United States. A national probability sample (N = 470) of three age cohorts (18–25, 34–41, and 52–59 years) completed a survey between March, 2016 and March, 2017. Most men did not meet CDC recomm...

Data used for this paper are available at Generations W1_PLOS ONE_PrEP.xls. (XLS)

We build on previous stress theories by drawing attention to the concept of anticipatory couple-level minority stressors (i.e., stressors expected to occur in the future that emanate from the stigmatization of certain relationship forms). A focus on anticipatory couple-level minority stressors brings with it the potential for important insight into...

This Essay seeks to draw connections between race, sexual orientation, and social science in Supreme Court litigation. In some respects, advocates for racial minorities and sexual minorities face divergent trajectories. Among those asserting civil rights claims, LGBT rights claimants have been uniquely successful at the Court ever since Romer v. Ev...

Although previous research has examined associations among masculinity, sexual orientation, minority stress, and mental health, these studies focused exclusively on individuals as units of analysis. This study investigates how men in same-sex relationships uniquely experience minority stress associated with their perceptions and performances of mas...

The authors build on previous stress theories by drawing attention to the concept of anticipatory couple-level minority stressors (i.e., stressors expected to occur in the future that emanate from the stigmatization of certain relationship forms). A focus on anticipatory couple-level minority stressors brings with it the potential for important ins...

This Article uses the fiftieth anniversary of Loving v. Virginia to juxtapose the public legal posture of LGBT litigants with the private practices of racial discrimination in intimate relationships, or “sexual racism.” In arguing for marriage equality, LGBT litigants and groups successfully relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loving decision for it...

Over the past 15 years, the LGBTQ movement in the United States has vanquished sodomy laws, the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and laws banning same-sex marriage. Despite these formal legal advances, there remains a disparity between social acceptance of same-sex marriage and persistent aversion to sex between men. Even as the U.S. Suprem...

The authors examined whether the perception of unequal relationship recognition - a novel couple-level minority stressor - has negative consequences for mental health among same-sex couples. Data were analyzed from a dyadic study of 100 same-sex couples (200 individuals) in the United States. Being in a legal marriage was associated with lower perc...

Due to significant historical change in the late 20th and early 21st century related to both health and cultural attitudes toward homosexuality, gay men of distinct birth cohorts may diverge considerably in their health and identity development. We argue that research on gay men's health has not adequately considered the significance of membership...

The American Psychological Association Publications and Communications Board Working Group on Journal Article Reporting Standards for Qualitative Research (JARS–Qual Working Group) was charged with examining the state of journal article reporting standards as they applied to qualitative research and with generating recommendations for standards tha...

This study examined the impact of sexual closeness on sexual well-being. We developed a nuanced and multifaceted conceptualization of sexual closeness in the form of a constellation of ideal sexual closeness with a partner, actual sexual closeness, and the discrepancy between the two. Data were obtained from a diverse sample of N?=?619 participants...

Social stress resulting from stigma, prejudice, and discrimination—“minority stress”—negatively impacts sexual minority individuals’ health and relational well-being. The present study examined how being in a same-sex couple can result in exposure to unique minority stressors not accounted for at the individual level. Relationship timeline intervie...

Gay men’s experiences with prostate cancer and its impact on health-related quality of life are poorly understood. This qualitative study explored gay men’s experience with prostate cancer with a focus on the emotional, physical, and sexual impact of cancer; support needs; and healthcare interactions. Three semi-structured focus groups of gay men w...

Transgender people experience systematic oppression due to societal endorsement of binary notions of gender. As a result, they are at risk for self-stigmatization via the internalization of negative attitudes about being transgender. Thus, researchers need instruments to assess the multilayered nature of transgender identity and its role in the exp...

This chapter illustrates the utility of narrative approaches within the social psychological study of social justice. By providing an overview of narrative approaches within social psychology, the potential for narrative research to generate knowledge of interest to social justice researchers is highlighted. In efforts to further promote the utilit...

Throughout history, the rights of stigmatized minority group members have been subject to popular debate and voter referenda. The impact of the resulting devaluing social discourse on the well-being of minority group members remains unknown. For example, exposure to the discourse leading up to decisions on same-sex marriage may have negative conseq...

This article reports a study of the function and composition of social support networks among diverse lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) men and women (n = 396) in comparison to their heterosexual peers (n = 128). Data were collected using a structured social support network matrix in a community sample recruited in New York City. Our findings show t...

In this reply to the commentary on Frost and Gola (2015), I address three primary substantive themes raised across the authors' responses, with particular attention to research on intimacy in same-sex couples' lives after the U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Obergefell v. Hodges: (a) the complexities inherent to between-group comparisons of members o...

Romantic relationship dissolution is among the most stressful events that a person can experience. However, variability exists in the experience of a breakup and its impact on mental health. This study employed a mixed methods approach to understand how newly single people make meaning of significant events in their previous relationships through n...

Same-sex couples experience unique minority stressors. It is known that strong social networks facilitate access to psychosocial resources that help people reduce and manage stress. However, little is known about the social networks of same-sex couples, in particular their connections to other same-sex couples, which is important to understand give...

Arguments for restricting access to legal marriage for same-sex couples are commonly based in claims about differences between heterosexual and same-sex couples regarding the social and psychological meaning of marriage. This mixed methods study examined meanings of intimacy and relational experience in a purposive North American sample of members...

This study examined the role of nonevent stress-in the form of frustrated personal project pursuits in the arenas of relationships and work-as a contributing factor to mental health disparities between heterosexual and lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) populations. A purposive sample of 431 LGB (55%) and heterosexually identified (45%) individuals l...

Despite recent improvements in social and legal climates, same-sex couples continue to experience stress stemming from prejudice and discrimination, which can negatively impact the quality of their relationships. This mixed methods study examined the stories that 99 individuals in same-sex relationships told about their experiences of minority stre...

How does one make judgments about the quality of a qualitative research study? What criteria are indicative of sound inferences and valuable conclusions made from analyses of qualitative data? These questions are on the mind of any researcher engaged in or considering the use of qualitative research methods in psychology. Because the question of qu...