The focus of Meyer’s minority stress theory (2003) was to identify stress exposure as a mediator of the association between social status and adverse mental health outcomes in LGB populations. Consequently, this important work did not seek to illuminate the psychological pathways from stress to psychopathology, a point that Meyer acknowledged in his review as a crucial direction for future research. The psychological mediation framework advanced in this paper highlights several psychological processes that are activated by the social stressors identified in the minority stress theory (Meyer, 2003). In drawing upon recent evidence from the general stress literature on stress-initiating processes that account for the stress-psychopathology link (Grant et al., 2003; Pearlin et al., 1981; Repetti et al., 2002), this framework therefore complements and considerably advances the initial insights provided by the minority stress theory.
