The Development of the Minority Stress Model and its Impact on LGBT Research

Join us for a discussion with Ilan H. Meyer, PhD, Williams Distinguished Senior Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA’s School of Law; Adjunct Professor, Community Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Dr. Meyer’s areas of research include stress and illness in minority populations, in particular, the relationship of minority status, minority identity, prejudice and discrimination and mental health outcomes in sexual minorities and the intersection of minority stressors related to sexual orientation, race/ethnicity and gender. In several highly cited papers, Dr. Meyer has developed a model of minority stress that describes the relationship of social stressors and mental disorders and helps to explain LGBT health disparities. The model has guided his and other investigators’ population research on LGBT health disparities by identifying the mechanisms by which social stressors impact health and describing the harm to LGBT people from prejudice and stigma. Dr. Meyer is Principal Investigator of the Generations Study, a U.S. national probability study of stress, identity, health, and health care utilization across three cohorts of sexual minorities (NICHD grant R01HD078526) and TransPop, the first national probability sample of transgender individuals in the U.S. (NICHD grant R01HD090468).