Open AccessStudy of Psychological Distress among Sexual and Gender Minorities and Cishet Young Adults of India and United States of America
Author(s) -
Vanshaj Gandhi,
Kamini C. Tanwar
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.112
H-Index - 10
ISSN - 0033-3077
DOI - 10.17762/pae.v58i1.831
Subject(s) - psychology , population , distress , respondent , mental health , clinical psychology , demography , psychiatry , sociology , political science , law
Thedecriminalisation of homosexuality on September 6, 2018 in India has led to focus of Indian researchers towards mental health of Sexual and Gender Minorities (SGMs) who face day-to-day challenges such as social-unacceptance, identity under-expression,discrimination and hate crimes. The present study focuses onanalysing psychological distress among one of the most developed country i.e. United States of America (US) and the fast-developing country i.e. India with the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ and Cishet population. To fulfil the objective, data was collected from 200 young adults falling under 18-40 years of age from both Indians (N=100) and Americans (N= 100) through Purposive Sampling Technique. Furthermore, there were 50 LGBTQ+ and 50 Cishet sample inboth group of each country. The responses were collected through SurveyMonkey. Every respondent was individually assessed using Kessler’s Psychological Distress Scale (K10; Kessler et al.,2002) for evaluating the extent of psychological distress in the individual.The data analysis was done by Independent sample t-test using IBM SPSS software.The results indicate that 1.) Young adults of India have higher psychological distress than that of Americansas well as both the group (LGBTQ+ and Cishet Population) of India have higher psychological distress than that of the US;2) LGBTQ+ population has higher psychological distress in comparison to Cishet population in both India and US as well as for young adults.