State racial and LGBTQ+ equality: Moderators of prospective suicide risk pathways among young ethnoracially minoritized lesbian and bisexual women and nonbinary individuals

Abstract

Ethnoracially minoritized LGBTQ+ young people demonstrate greater suicide risk than their non-Hispanic White peers, yet limited research exists examining state equality protective factors that can reduce risk, especially among lesbian and bisexual women/nonbinary individuals assigned female at birth (LBWNBI). Guided by a strengths-based approach and integrated theoretical model, we used an observed variable path analysis to examine moderating effects of state racial and LGBTQ+ equality, and interactions between these factors and individual- and interpersonal/community-level protective factors, on prospective associations between intersectional minority stressors and entrapment, and entrapment and suicidal ideation. The analytic sample included 486 ethnoracially minoritized LBWNBI in the National Queer Women's Mental Health Cohort longitudinal study (M_age = 22; 40% Hispanic/Latine, 38% Black/African American, 18% Asian; 51% bisexual) who completed baseline (T1), 3-month (T2), and 6-month (T3) surveys. Intersectional minority stressors at T1 led to greater suicidal ideation at T3 via entrapment at T2. Conjoined state racial and LGBTQ+ equality moderated the relationship between T1 intersectional minority stressors and T2 entrapment to reduce T3 suicidal ideation. This effect was also moderated by individual protective factors, proving especially important for LBWNBI living in states with low equality. Suicide prevention efforts with this population should involve multi-faceted, multi-sectoral policies and interventions that effect transformative change to redress historical and contemporary structural-level oppressions, injustices, and inequities.