Sexual minority participants in a new Israeli study reported higher levels of anxiety and depression, lower well-being, and more difficulties with emotion regulation than heterosexual participants, according to researchers who used network analysis to map how mental health and sexual health measures connect inside each group.
The study, conducted by researchers affiliated with the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, drew on a cross-sectional online survey of 465 adults in Israel collected between September 2022 and April 2023.
Researchers recruited participants primarily through Facebook and Instagram and collected responses through Qualtrics. The sample skewed young, with an average age of about 25, and was predominantly female. About 70% identified as heterosexual.
Sexual and gender minorities report higher scores in anxiety, depression
In results that remained significant after statistical correction, sexual and gender minority (SGM) participants reported higher scores for anxiety and depression, more self-reported diagnosed psychopathologies, and lower well-being than heterosexual participants.
The paper also reported higher levels of sex-related distress, problematic pornography use, and compulsive sexual behavior disorder measures in the SGM group.
Beyond comparing averages, the researchers used network analysis to examine which factors appeared most “central” in each group’s pattern of associations. They found that depression carried a higher “expected influence” in the SGM network, while sexual functioning played a more central role in the heterosexual network. The number of diagnosed psychopathologies also appeared more important as a bridging factor among SGM participants, according to centrality tests reported in the study.
The researchers also reported a small set of network “edge” differences that held up after correction, including the relationship between anxiety and depression and a link between compulsive sexual behavior disorder and emotion regulation.
The authors cautioned that the work relied on an anonymous, social media–recruited convenience sample, which limited response-rate estimates and could introduce selection bias. They also noted the limits of cross-sectional network analysis for making causal claims and called for more representative, longitudinal research.