“I can’t stop thinking about it”: The mental and behavioral health correlates of disclosure rumination among sexual minorities.

What is it about?

People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or identify with another sexual orientation that is not heterosexual often struggle with having to disclose (or share) their identity to others. The experience of disclosure can be stressful when disclosers are not sure how others will respond and sometimes disclosures are met with negative remarks resulting from bias. This paper demonstrates that those who are less "out" about their identity to people in their social network, in other words those who conceal their identity from others, tend to engage in a negative approach when thinking about identity disclosure. Specifically, people who are more concealed ruminate about future potential disclosures (for instance, repeatedly thinking about what they will say or how the event may go) and past disclosure instances (for example, thinking repeatedly about how the discloser could have said or done something differently) more than people who less concealed.

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Why is it important?

The findings of this paper bring a novel explanation to prior research suggesting that identity concealment is associated with negative mental health outcomes for sexual minority individuals. We think that future efforts can specifically target sexual minorities' rumination about identity disclosure to help reduce poor mental health and substance use in this population.

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