Anxiety and Depression Across Gender and Sexual Minorities: Implications for Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, Pansexual, Demisexual, Asexual, Queer, and Questioning Individuals

Empirical findings indicate that sexual and gender minorities report notably poorer outcomes on measures of mental health when compared with cisgender/heterosexual individuals. Although several studies have examined these issues, few have taken the time to examine differences between cisgender/heterosexual and specific lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities. This is especially important as an increasing number of new gender and sexual identities emerge, yet limitations in statistical power often preclude such analyses. Thus, the following study addressed this gap by examining data from a large sample of college students from the national Health Minds Study (n = 43,632). Results indicated that college students with transgender and gender nonconforming identities reported significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety symptoms compared with students with cisgender identities, with large effect sizes. Disparities were also significant across sexual minority participants, with the smallest effect sizes being between heterosexual and gay/lesbian individuals, and the largest effect sizes between heterosexual and pansexual participants for depression, and heterosexual and demisexual participants for anxiety. We also found evidence of an interaction of gender and sexual identity impacting mental health such that those with minority statuses in both identity groups had significantly worse outcomes compared to those with only one minority identity. Our results indicate that individuals in the emerging sexual and gender minority categories (pansexual, demisexual, asexual, queer, questioning, and transgender/gender nonconforming) report significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety when compared with cisgender/heterosexual individuals, and even significantly more than those who identify as gay/lesbian. Implications for mental health providers and researchers are discussed.