Homophobia and mental health: a scourge of modern era

Abstract

Homophobia is still a scourge in the modern era. Despite a greater acceptance of sexual variations and same-sex marriage in many countries, homophobia is widely sustained by religious, political and cultural values and beliefs at individual and social level. Most of homophobic attitudes are based on the principle of heteronormativity according to which heterosexuality is the standard for legitimating social and sexual relationships and homosexuality is considered as an abnormal variant. Homophobia may be also recognised at institutional level (state-sponsored homophobia, social homophobia) and supported by laws or religious beliefs. Moreover, internalised homophobia (IH) is defined as the inward direction of societal homophobic behaviours at individual level and refers to the subjective psychological impact of these negative attitudes. In fact, IH is significantly associated with a high prevalence of internalising mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, stress/trauma-related disorders, etc. We believe that a set of immediate actions are needed in order to contrast homophobia and its impact on mental health, in particular political initiatives, educational trainings and scientific research should be promoted with a specific focus on mental health needs of people target of homophobia.

Heteronormativity in Education Within a South Texas Borderland Region: A Qualitative Study

“…• Affirming/Antihomophobic School leadership in borderland schools (Hernandez & Fraynd, 2014;Hernandez & Kose, 2012;Hernandez & Marshall, 2017;Kosciw et al, 2016Kosciw et al, , 2017Kosciw et al, , 2018. Ventriglio (2021) argues for "educational trainings on homophobia for secondary schools and universities" (p. 2). Additional findings from the study suggest trauma, Latinx intergenerational trauma, and trauma response types contributed to how gender and sexually diverse, Latinx participants experienced and confronted homophobia in the borderland region.…”

Does coming out matter? A serial mediation model from outness to reduced psychological distress among Chinese gay men

“…Moreover, internalized homonegativity has consistently been suggested as an important risk factor for mental health in Western contexts (see Ventriglio et al., 2021 for a review). Also, higher internalized homonegativity is associated with higher psychological distress (Xu et al., 2017) and lower life satisfaction (Wen & Zheng, 2019) among Chinese gay and bisexual men.…”

It's not just in my head: An intersectional, social and systems‐based framework in gender and sexuality diversity

“…This same principle applies to the mental health of LGBTQIA+ people. Because homophobia is often embedded within cultural systems, institutions, religion and politics, effective intervention should be targeted at such levels (Ventriglio et al, 2021 ).…”