Risk of Psychopathological Disorders of LGBTQ Students Essay Example

of overall mistreatment compared to their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts (Dunbar et al., 2017).

The effects of this harassment and prejudice can be detrimental to LGBTQ college students suffering from mental illness. Recent studies found “evidence of an interaction of gender and sexual identity impacting mental health such that those with minority status in both identity groups had significantly worse outcomes compared to those with only one minority identity” (Borgana et al., (2018). However, these results do not consider the effects of having multiple psychopathological illnesses at once.

Psychopathology

While it’s evident that anxiety and depression are the main mental health illnesses that most studies evaluate, there a many more that are often missed or overlooked. As noted in the study there are other aspects to look at such as substance abuse disorder, compulsive buying, compulsive sexual behavior, and overeating (Grant, Odlaug, Derbyshire, Schreiber, Lust & Christenson, 2014). These other aspects of mental health are daunting and infringes on every part of daily life, however, they’re often overlooked or pushed to the side and categorized as other.

As mentioned before, there are usually resources for mental health on campus but as noted in a study by Dunbar et al. (2017), LGBTQ students are more likely to endorse barriers such as embarrassment, lack of confidentiality, lack of accessibility and more as reasons not to use the resources on campus. This can more likely contribute to levels of severe psychopathological distress as well as academic impairment in regards to the studies of these students. In this study, we will examine how LGBTQ Students are more at risk of having multiple psychopathological disorders compared to their cisgender and heterosexual peers.