Being a member of a minority group can have a harmful, prolonged effect on a person. Now mix that with multiple minority statues and it can be a lifelong harm. Cathy Kelleher studied the prolonged effects of people with a minority status. She found that the stigma that LGBTQ youth faced had a negative effect on their lives currently and into the future. She also concluded that any identity-based stigma would have a negative effect on a person of that identity for more than just at the time of the incident. This is called minority stress.

While research has been done on the effects of minority stress almost no research has been done on the multitude of minority stress and the adding on of minority identities. For instance, the stress felt by a woman, and an LGBTQ individual and a person of color is one level, but the stress felt by an LGBTQ woman of color has to be worse and different altogether. This is important to understand because to better help those with minority stress, we need to fuller understand where different identities intersect.

This concept and idea of minority stress is a newer idea and would be one of the next steps in LGBTQ/minority research so that we can better find out how we can equip ourselves to combat minority stress and to help those who face it. The continued research could also go into determining if there is a link between minority stress and the issues faced by minorities later on in life. This research has been ignored and has continued to be ignored due to the people who control the funding for research and organization that do the research. This allows the funders and leaders, privileged, white gay men, to bury their pain and the effects of minority stress on them instead of facing it head on and helping others. 

 

Work Cited:

Kelleher, Cathy. “Minority Stress and Health: Implications for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) Young People.” Counselling Psychology Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 4, 2009, pp. 373–379., doi:10.1080/09515070903334995.