In addition to improving upon these methodological limitations, future research needs to focus on identifying other emotion regulation, social/interpersonal, and cognitive sequelae of stigma-related stress that can explain increased psychiatric morbidity among sexual minorities. For example, although rumination appears to be one emotion regulation mechanism accounting for the stress-psychopathology association among sexual minorities, there are other salient emotion regulation strategies that are utilized by members of stigmatized groups (Miller & Kaiser, 2001) that may also confer risk for psychopathology. One example is suppression, defined as inhibiting emotion-expressive behaviors (Gross, 2001). Suppression has negative consequences for both physiological and psychological functioning (Gross, 2001). For those with concealable stigmas (e.g., homosexuality) who do not wish to disclose their stigmatized status, suppressing emotion-expressive behaviors may be one of few options available for responding to stigma-related events. There is some evidence that lesbians engage in suppression to a greater extent than heterosexual women (Matthews et al., 2002); however, there has been only one study of sexual minorities that examined suppression of emotions within the specific context of stigma-relevant stressors (Hatzenbuehler, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Dovidio, in
