COVID-19, violence, and mental health among Indigenous gay and bisexual men in Guatemala: An urgent call from key stakeholders.

We explored how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the health and wellbeing of Indigenous gay and bisexual men (GBM) in Guatemala, a group that experiences intersectional stigma and structural barriers to health. Between February and May 2021, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews via Zoom with key stakeholders (n = 11) working with Indigenous GBM throughout Guatemala. We coded thematically and conducted narrative analysis to identify the most salient themes. Participants described that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many Indigenous GBM migrated to urban centres to avoid stigma and violence from families and rural communities. After the onset of COVID-19, many Indigenous GBM lost their jobs and were forced to move back in with families. For Indigenous GBM who returned, participants described a perceived increase in the severity of physical and psychological violence. Participants attributed this increase in severity to retribution from families and communities for having left. Most Indigenous GBM-serving organisations reported a drastic increase in demand for mental health services. Organisations serving Indigenous GBM have an urgent need to scale up their mental health services and find innovative ways to provide these services remotely during the pandemic and beyond. Technology-based mental health interventions that require little 'live' interaction may be appropriate.

Theory from the South: a decolonial approach to the psychology of global inequality.

Hegemonic understandings rooted in the epistemic perspectives of the Global North explain global inequality (i.e., unequal relations between Global North and South) as a developmental gap in progress toward Eurocentric modernity. From this perspective, global inequality exists because Northern societies have created modern institutions and mentalities (e.g., independent selfways) that have enabled them to achieve development, and Southern societies suffer from poverty because their institutions and associated mentalities (e.g., interdependent selfways) retard development. In contrast, a decolonial standpoint, rooted in epistemic perspectives of the Global South, emphasizes the coloniality of modern individualist mentalities: the extent to which they reflect and reproduce colonial violence. From this perspective, modern individualist mentalities are a source, rather than solution, of global inequality, and a more equitable world requires cultivation of mentalities attuned to the interdependence of everyday life.

The (Biological or Cultural) Essence of Essentialism: Implications for Policy Support among Dominant and Subordinated Groups.

Most research links (racial) essentialism to negative intergroup outcomes. We propose that this conclusion reflects both a narrow conceptual focus on biological/genetic essence and a narrow research focus from the perspective of racially dominant groups. We distinguished between beliefs in biological and cultural essences, and we investigated the implications of this distinction for support of social justice policies (e.g., affirmative action) among people with dominant (White) and subordinated (e.g., Black, Latino) racial identities in the United States. Whereas, endorsement of biological essentialism may have similarly negative implications for social justice policies across racial categories, we investigated the hypothesis that endorsement of cultural essentialism would have different implications across racial categories. In Studies 1a and 1b, we assessed the properties of a cultural essentialism measure we developed using two samples with different racial/ethnic compositions. In Study 2, we collected data from 170 participants using an online questionnaire to test the implications of essentialist beliefs for policy support. Consistent with previous research, we found that belief in biological essentialism was negatively related to policy support for participants from both dominant and subordinated categories. In contrast, the relationship between cultural essentialism and policy support varied across identity categories in the hypothesized way: negative for participants from the dominant category but positive for participants from subordinated categories. Results suggest that cultural essentialism may provide a way of identification that subordinated communities use to mobilize support for social justice.