The Mental Health of Marginalised Communities: Introducing the Minority Stress Model and its Implications

This blog post's contents will be rooted in the Minority Stress Model. This idea was developed by Ian Meyer in 2003, and has been highly influential in studying mental health and the factors that impact people of a diverse background (Frost & Meyer, 2023). This model is a framework which states that the role of stressors experienced uniquely by minority groups, which include discrimination, stigmas and violence, are a potent contributor to poor physical and mental health (Kia, MacKinnon, Abramovich & Bonato, 2021). This blog will look into the repercussions that the ideas behind this framework have on marginalised communities, specifically looking into their mental health.

There are many marginalised groups to which this framework can be applied to, ranging from people from an ethnically diverse background, people with disabilities, or people with different sexual identities. This framework can be used as a model to analyse the impacts on mental health within these groups, for example, using the minority stress model, researchers found that people with autism were more likely to have increased mental health problems due to everyday discrimination and internalised stigma (Botha & Frost, 2018). However, whilst in a broad manner this model is very applicable, this is not necessarily a framework that can be specifically applied in all scenarios. Scholars have noted that there are many limitations regarding the use of the Minority Stress Model, including the lack of intersectional thinking, inattention to processes across time, and dated language that is not applicable to all groups (Rivas-Koehl, Rivas-Koehl & Smith, 2023). A large reason for these limitations is due to how the Minority Stress Model is over 20 years old at the time of writing this blog, therefore meaning that it may not be as applicable to people's mental health nowadays as it may have been previously.

Whilst the Minority Stress Model is a solid base on examining mental health in marginalised groups and communities, further developments need to be made to the model in order to ensure that it is more modern, and can be applied to people's mental health needs nowadays. This could be as simple as having further research which understands the intersectional nature of marginalisation, as well as multi-dimensional nature of safety issues of these groups who have been researched (Cheraghi-Sohi et al. 2020). Applying this more modern lens to the Minority Stress Model allows for this to be used by researchers, and examines the reasons in a more practical manner as to why marginalised groups face mental health struggles. Whilst understanding an individual's struggles with mental health is not as simple as just using a framework, using this idea can provide an overview as to the struggles that people from a marginalised community face which have a detrimental impact on their mental health.

References

Botha, M., Frost, D (2018). 'Extending the Minority Stress Model to Understand Mental Health Problems Experienced by the Autistic Population', Society and Mental Health

Cheraghi-Sohi, S., Panagioti, M., Daker-White, G., Giles, S., Riste, L., Kirk, S., Ong, BN., Poppleton, A., Campbell, S., Sanders, C (2020). 'Patient safety in marginalised groups: a narrative scoping review', International Journal for Equity in Health

Frost, D., Meyer, I (2023). 'Minority stress theory: Application, critique, and continued relevance', Current Opinion in Psychology

Kia, H., MacKinnon, KR., Abramovich, A., Bonato, S (2021). 'Peer support as a protective factor against suicide in trans populations: A scoping review', Social Science and Medicine

Rivas-Koehl, M., Rivas-Koehl, D., Smith, SM (2023). 'The temporal intersectionality minority stress model: Reimagining minority stress theory', Journal of Family Theory & Review