The Relationship Between Minority Stress, Resources, and Health Among German Gay and Bisexual Men

The health and wellbeing of queer people, including gay and bisexual men, are worse than those of endosex, cisgender, and heterosexual individuals on average. The minority stress model states that stress resulting from experiencing discrimination (distal minority stress) as well as feared discrimination and internalized stigma (proximal minority stress) is responsible for poorer health and wellbeing in marginalized groups. There are international studies supporting Meyer’s model, but only few studies focus on Germany. We analyzed the data for endosex-cisgender gay and bisexual men (N = 6404, N = 2278 sample without missing data) from the “How are you?”-study. To test the assumptions of the minority stress model, path analyses were performed. For differences between bisexual and gay men, t-tests and multigroup analyses were calculated. Our findings show that gay and bisexual men in Germany experience low stigmas (enacted stigma, felt stigma, and internalized stigma), that still relates to health (subjective health, physical health, and mental health), mostly with small effect sizes. Furthermore, differences in levels of enacted stigma, internalized stigma, and the relationship between wellbeing and health among gay and bisexual men were identified. Of the four resources that we examined (social embeddedness, community connectedness, educational level, and income), social embeddedness was shown to be the most important for health. The results are discussed in relation to differences between gay and bisexual men and in relation to anti-discrimination as a strategy for health promotion.