Self-schemas and information processing biases as mechanisms underlying sexual orientation disparities in depressive symptoms: Results from a longitudinal, population-based study.

ABSTRACT: Sexual minority individuals experience higher prevalence of major depression and more frequent depressive symptoms compared to heterosexual individuals. Although existing theories have suggested cognitive mechanisms that may explain these disparities, empirical tests are limited by a reliance on cross-sectional designs, self-reported measures, and nonprobability samples. We analyzed data from a longitudinal, population-based study of young adults (N = 1,065; n = 497 sexual minority) who completed validated measures of depressive symptoms over a 3-year period; at Wave 2, participants completed the self-referent encoding task, a behavioral task assessing self-schemas and information processing biases. Self-schemas were measured with the drift rate, which was estimated via the c

SUBMITTER: Branstrom R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10524885 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature