Internalized sexual stigma and psychological well-being: exploratory research on italian and belgian gay and lesbian people

Numerous researches have shown that in homosexual people the internalized homophobia is a risk factor for mental health, whereas the social support is a protective factor. Internalized homophobia affects the onset of mental disorders and it’s related to less social support (Mc Gregor et al. 2001; Szymanski et al., 2008). The aim of this research is to understand if the legislative context can influence the psychological well-being. For this reasons we have analyzed the levels of internalized homophobia, anxiety, depression and social support in two groups of gay and lesbian people coming from Italy and Belgium. These two European countries are very different in terms of civil rights of the LGBT population. The sample is composed of 194 adults (M=29 years, SD=9.08). From the analyzed questionnaires (MISS- LG, BDI, STAI, MSPSS) has emerged that the investigated constructions are well related to each other and that the levels of internalized homophobia are higher in the Belgian gay group, who enjoy the same civil rights of the heterosexual people, more than in the Italian one. This particular result could be related to a greater frequency of coming out of Belgians compared to Italians or to a sort of defence reaction of the Italian group to the tests, affected by the continuous negations of their civil rights. Future researches should focus both on the several aspects of the coming- out process and on the family support, which plays a huge role in mental health.