Recent research on the intersection of multiple stigmatized identities has demonstrated that racial/ethnic sexual minorities face stressors that are multiplicative in nature (e.g., Eliason, 1996; Stirratt, Meyer, Ouellette, & Gara, 2008). In addition to facing stigma related to race (Williams, Neighbors, & Jackson, 2003), there is some evidence for greater stigma toward homosexuality among racial/ethnic minority communities (e.g., Rosario, Schrimshaw, & Hunter, 2004). Although this research suggests that LGB individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups might be vulnerable to greater psychiatric morbidity than Caucasians, few studies have examined this hypothesis empirically. One exception is a recent study using nationally representative data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (Cochran, Mays, Alegria, Ortega, & Takeuchi, 2007). Latino and Asian American individuals of minority sexual orientation status were shown to be at similar or somewhat lower risk for psychiatric disorders when compared to Caucasian samples in the published literature (Gilman et al., 2001). According to the framework advanced in this paper, these results suggest that racial/ethnic minority groups may have more general psychological protective factors that buffer against the onset of psychiatric disorders. Given the novelty of these results, this represents an important area for future inquiry.
