Strategies for Coping with Minority Stress among Queer Young Adults: Usage Frequency, Associations with Demographics, and Mental Health.

Queer young adults report significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression than their heterosexual counterparts, which is linked to sexual minority stress. Therefore, it is important to understand the coping strategies employed by this population to navigate minority stress and how coping strategies may impact mental health outcomes. Drawing from a U.S. national diverse sample of 387 queer young adults (ages 18-39 years), we analyzed descriptive results of 11 behavioral strategies to cope with minority stress and used ordered logistic and linear regression to examine the following objectives: the frequency of the use of each coping strategy, and the associations between each strategy and demographic characteristics as well as depression and anxiety. Results revealed that avoidance and talking with friends were the most frequently utilized coping strategies, while prayer/religious activities and counseling/psychotherapy/support groups were infrequently used. We examined utilization preferences of coping strategies across demographic factors (e.g., assigned sex at birth and sexual orientation). The use of counseling/psychotherapy/support group was positively associated with mental health symptoms, while exercise and mindfulness/mediation were associated with lower mental health symptoms. Our findings provide insights for mental health researchers and professionals in selecting appropriate coping strategies for queer young adults in prevention and intervention efforts.

The effects of psychotherapy for anhedonia on subcortical brain volumes measured with ultra-high field MRI.

BACKGROUND: Anhedonia is a transdiagnostic symptom often resistant to treatment. The identification of biomarkers sensitive to anhedonia treatment will aid in the evaluation of novel anhedonia interventions. METHODS: This is an exploratory analysis of changes in subcortical brain volumes accompanying psychotherapy in a transdiagnostic anhedonic sample using ultra-high field (7-Tesla) MRI. Outpatients with clinically impairing anhedonia (n = 116) received Behavioral Activation Treatment for Anhedonia, a novel psychotherapy, or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifiers NCT02874534 and NCT04036136). Subcortical brain volumes were estimated via the MultisegPipeline, and regions of interest were the amygdala, caudate nucleus, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen, and thalamus. Bivariate mixed effects models estimated pre-treatment relations between anhedonia severity and subcortical brain volumes, change over time in subcortical brain volumes, and associations between changes in subcortical brain volumes and changes in anhedonia symptoms. RESULTS: As reported previously (Cernasov et al., 2023), both forms of psychotherapy resulted in equivalent and significant reductions in anhedonia symptoms. Pre-treatment anhedonia severity and subcortical brain volumes were not related. No changes in subcortical brain volumes were observed over the course of treatment. Additionally, no relations were observed between changes in subcortical brain volumes and changes in anhedonia severity over the course of treatment. LIMITATIONS: This trial included a modest sample size and did not have a waitlist-control condition or a non-anhedonic comparison group. CONCLUSIONS: In this exploratory analysis, psychotherapy for anhedonia was not accompanied by changes in subcortical brain volumes, suggesting that subcortical brain volumes may not be a candidate biomarker sensitive to response to psychotherapy.