Predicting psychological well-being in gay men and lesbiansretrospective bullying and psychosocial factors

Resumen

Among the different difficulties gay-men and lesbians must face it is worth mentioning the high probability of being victims of bullying in their childhood and/or adolescence. To be more specific, our results show that more than half of the gay men and lesbians who took part in the study, have suffered some kind of harassment, and a 21.7% of them was a victim of bullying because of being homosexual. This fact, combined with the problem of creating social networks which provide support, difficulties when it comes to accepting their own sexual orientation and acceptance by other significant figures of homosexuality are capable of influencing on subjects� psychological well-being. Along with these factors, instrumentality and expressiveness dimensions of gender identity can also be factors which may influence on psychological well-being. The results obtained in this study, carried out with 119 gay men and lesbians, suggest that the frequency of bullying suffered in childhood and/or adolescence influences today on subjects� psychological well-being and, more specifically, on depression and anxiety levels. Our results also confirm the importance of social support provided by friends as well as the significance of counting on the acceptance of one�s sexual orientation by families. However, the social support provided by families and the acceptance of homosexuality by close social networks do not seem to be significant regarding psychological well-being. Moreover, instrumental gender features seem to contribute to psychological well-being whereas expressive features exert the opposite effect.