Social Support and Internalizing Psychopathology Among Sexual and Gender Minority Individuals: A Meta-Analysis

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals often suffer from a myriad of stressors within their social environments due to stigma and its outcomes (Meyer, 2003). Conversely, social support may impact SGM individuals’ psychological resilience. To quantify the impact of their interpersonal environments, the current preregistered meta-analysis included 181 studies (N = 75,376) that reported associations between social support (i.e., family, peer, partner, school, work) and internalizing psychopathology (i.e., depression, anxiety, nonsuicidal self-injury, suicidality) among SGM samples. Overall, a small, negative association was observed, r = -.26, with depression’s associations being significantly larger than the other psychopathology categories, r = -.30. Smaller effects were observed for samples with a larger share of bisexual individuals and when a SGM-specific measure was used. Otherwise, the negative association between social support and psychopathology was robust to demographic factors (e.g., age, gender, % white), SGM identity (e.g., % gender minority), source of support, and levels of structural stigma. No evidence of publication bias was observed. This robust finding suggests that all forms of SGM social support are similarly and complimentarily associated with lower internalizing psychopathology.