Given the increased risk across multiple indicators of mental health burdens, researchers have turned to identifying factors that can explain this elevated risk in LGB populations. Two quite distinct classes of processes have been proposed to account for the higher rates of mental disorders among sexual minorities. The first focuses on unique, group-specific processes that sexual minorities confront as members of a stigmatized group. This approach, as reviewed in the minority stress theory (Meyer, 2003), emphasizes distal and proximal stress processes as predictors of psychopathology. The second approach examines the role of general psychological processes that have been shown to predict developmental and clinical outcomes in heterosexual samples (Diamond, 2003; Savin-Williams, 2001). Research emerging from this approach therefore focuses on common psychosocial processes that sexual minorities share with their heterosexual peers.
