(PS7-B42) Religious Conflict, Internalized Homophobia, and Suicidal Ideation in Bisexual Individuals

Background: As many as 1 in 5 Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (LGB) adults have attempted suicide in their lifetime (Hottes et al., 2016), with B individuals experiencing the highest rates of suicide attempt at 27%, compared to 19% for LG individuals (CDC, 2017). Although religion is usually a protective factor against suicide, LG individuals with a religious affiliation often experience conflict between their religion and their sexual orientation that leads to internalized homophobia (Barnes & Meyer, 2012). Relatively few studies, however, explore the impact of religion on suicide risk in B individuals. We hypothesized that religious conflict would predict suicidal ideation through the mediating role of internalized homophobia conditionally based on sexual minority identity, with stronger associations in the LG versus B group.

Methods: Participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) (n = 268; M_age = 19.34, 64.21 % female, 83.0 % white, 66.1 % bisexual) completed the Religious-Sexuality Conflict Measure, the Minority Stress Scale, and the Revised Suicide Behavior Questionnaire. We tested our hypothesis using the PROCESS marco in SPSS with a model 7 (Hayes, 2017). The moderation prediction was that the a-b relationship in the mediation model is stronger for LG groups than the B group.

Results: Our mediation model was supported and explained 9.0 % of the variance in suicidal ideation (R² = .0901, F (2, 265) = 13.12, p < .001). Religious conflict significantly predicted internalized homophobia (path a; b = 0.498, p < .001) and internalized homophobia predicted suicidal ideation (path b; b = 0.801, p < .001).  Religious conflict did not significantly predict suicidal ideation in the full mediation model (path c’; b = -0.0081, p = 0.68).  The bootstrapped confidence interval examining the indirect effect of religious conflict on suicidal ideation through internalized homophobia was significant (ab = 0.398, 95% CI [0.021 – 0.062]), suggesting a full mediating effect of religious conflict on suicidal ideation through internalized homophobia. The full moderated mediation model explained 18.8% of the variance in suicidal ideation (R² = 0.188, F (1, 266) = 20.32, p < .001). However, the interaction between religious conflict and sexual minority identity was not significant for internalized homophobia (b = .1899, p = 0.16), indicating that specific sexual minority identity did not moderate the relation between religious conflict and internalized homophobia.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that internalized homophobia explains the relationship between religious conflict and suicidal ideation, but the strength of the association between religious conflict and internalized homophobia did not differ based on sexual orientation. Although the association between religious conflict and internalized homophobia is well documented for LG individuals, our findings suggest that B individuals are similarly affected by this association. Clinicians working with all sexual minorities should assess for religious conflict and internalized homophobia, as well as suicidal ideation. LGB Affirmative Cognitive Behavior Therapy (Pachankis et al., 2015) would be useful in learning strategies for reducing internalized homophobia.