Given this focus on general psychological processes, group-specific processes that may also be mediators of the stress-psychopathology link were not included in the psychological mediation framework. These processes include, but are not limited to, proximal stressors that were identified in the minority stress theory (Meyer, 2003). For example, rejection sensitivity, defined as “the tendency to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and overreact to rejection” (Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998), represents a potential group-specific mediator of stigma-related stress and internalizing disorders. Stigma-related stress (i.e., parental rejection of one’s sexual orientation) is associated with rejection sensitivity (Pachankis, Goldfried, & Ramrattan, 2008), and rejection sensitivity has been shown to prospectively predict depressive symptoms in gay men (Hatzenbuehler, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Erickson, 2008), providing support for both paths of the mediational framework. A fully integrative framework that includes both general and group-specific mediators is shown in Figure 2. Future studies are needed to examine the relationships between these processes, including testing the predictive specificity and validity of general versus group-specific processes as mediators of the stress-psychopathology association.
