The minority stress psychological mediation framework and mental health of Latinx sexual minority men: Como se mete debajo de la piel (how it gets under the skin).

The National Institute for Health has designated racial/ethnic minorities and sexual and gender minorities as health disparities populations. Researchers have historically examined these identity groups independently and failed to account for membership in both racial/ethnic and sexual and gender minority groups. As such, Latinx sexual minority populations continue to be understudied in the psychological literature. The minority stress psychological mediation framework (PMF) has been proposed as a model to understand the experiences of sexual minority people. The PMF purports that experiencing discrimination affects three psychological processes (i.e., affective/coping, cognitive, and social support processes) that are linked to mental health. The current study empirically examines the PMF with a sample of predominantly cisgender and bisexual Latinx sexual minority men (LSMM; n = 357) recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. This cross-sectional study examined descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and utilizes structural equation model to test the model fit of the PMF. We found that only affective and cognitive processes emerged as mediators in the relationship between recent experiences of minority stress to psychological distress. The current study highlights critical points of intervention for LSMM. It also provides evidence for the need to further test the applicability of PMF with LSMM and to incorporate more culturally salient variables.