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Minority stress


Minority stress describes chronically high levels of stress faced by members of stigmatized minority groups. It may be caused by a number of factors, including poor social support and low socioeconomic status, but the most well understood causes of minority stress are interpersonal prejudice and discrimination. Indeed, numerous scientific studies have shown that minority individuals experience a high degree of prejudice, which causes stress responses (e.g., high blood pressure, anxiety) that accrue over time, eventually leading to poor mental and physical health. Minority stress theory summarizes these scientific studies to explain how difficult social situations lead to chronic stress and poor health among minority individuals. It is an important concept for psychologists and public health officials who seek to understand and reduce minority health disparities.

Over the past three decades, social scientists have found that minority individuals suffer from mental and physical health disparities compared to their peers in majority groups. This research has focused primarily on racial and sexual minorities. For example, African Americans have been found to suffer elevated rates of hypertension compared to Whites. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals face higher rates of suicide, substance abuse, and cancer relative to heterosexuals. These health disparities impact day-to-day well-being as well as overall life expectancy, leading social scientists to ask: How can we reduce minority health disparities? In order to answer this question, it was first important to explore the underlying causes of the disparities.

One causal explanation for minority health disparities is the social selection hypothesis, which holds that there is something inherent to being in a minority group (e.g., genetics) that makes individuals susceptible to health problems. In general, this view has not been supported by empirical research. If minority individuals were genetically predisposed to poor health outcomes, the vast majority of them should face health disparities. However, large-scale empirical studies have shown that most of LGB individuals do not suffer psychopathology and that many African Americans do not have heart disease. Instead, research suggests that environmental factors explain minority health disparities better than do genetic factors. While the social selection hypothesis is still debated, it is clear that genetic and dispositional factors do not fully explain the health disparities observed in minority groups.


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