Understandings of Psychological Distress Among Queer and Gender Diverse Young People

Abstract

The psychological wellbeing of queer and gender diverse young people has received increased attention of late. The research evidences higher rates of psychological distress experienced by queer and gender diverse young people. For example, one large representative survey of Aotearoa New Zealand teenagers found that queer and gender diverse young people were over three and five times more likely, respectively, to report significant depressive symptoms than their straight, cisgender counterparts. Significantly less research has explored young people’s own perspectives on these issues. Such information is necessary to help us understand why such statistics exist, and indeed how queer and gender diverse young people’s psychological wellbeing might be supported in ways that could contribute to a change in these statistics. The present study draws on data from 21 semi-structured interviews with queer and gender diverse 16- to 18-year-olds to explore understandings of psychological distress among queer and gender diverse young people. Using thematic analysis, I developed four themes across two chapters. In the first analysis chapter, I focus on answering the question “How do queer and gender diverse young people describe their social worlds in making sense of psychological distress?” The first theme of this chapter, Cisheterosexism “Didn’t Really Affect Me”: Evading Victimhood, outlines the way that participants positioned themselves as unaffected by cisheterosexism, through evoking those who “have it worse”, through prioritising intentions in evaluating cisheterosexism, and through positioning themselves as able to cope with cisheterosexism. In the second theme of this chapter, I discuss the ways that participants framed cisheterosexism as alienating and harmful, a theme I titled “Not Hate, Generalised... Alienation”: Safety, Discomfort, and Difference. In the second analysis chapter, I shift my focus to answer the question “How do queer and gender diverse young people make use of biomedical understandings of psychological distress?” In the third theme, “The World Doesn’t Take You Seriously”: Dismissal of Distress and Identity, I explore how participants described feeling invalidated by those around them on the grounds of their age, with both their distress and identities being positioned as passing phases and therefore not valid. In the fourth theme, “It Gave Validity To My Feelings”: Making Sense of Psychological Distress Using The Biomedical Model, I outline how participants accessed recognition of their distress through use of the biomedical model, and the limitations of this. I situate these themes within wider societal frameworks, and explore the implications of participants’ talk on supporting queer and gender diverse young people’s experiences of psychological distress and wellbeing more widely.