Faculty Bibliography

Sexual minorities face greater exposure to discrimination and rejection than heterosexuals. Given these threats, sexual minorities may engage in sexual orientation concealment in order to avoid danger. This social stigma and minority stress places sexual minorities at risk for anxiety and related disorders. Given that three fourths of anxiety disorder onset occurs before the age of 24, the current study investigated the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression in sexual minority young adults relative to their heterosexual peers. Secondarily, the study investigated sexual orientation concealment as a predictor of anxiety and related disorders. A sample of 157 sexual minority and 157 heterosexual young adults matched on age and gender completed self-report measures of the aforementioned disorders, and indicated their level of sexual orientation concealment. Results revealed that sexual minority young adults reported greater symptoms relative to heterosexuals across all outcome measures. There were no interactions between sexual minority status and gender, however, women had higher symptoms across all disorders. Sexual minority young women appeared to be at the most risk for clinical levels of anxiety and related disorders. In addition, concealment of sexual orientation significantly predicted symptoms of social phobia. Implications are offered for the cognitive and behavioral treatment of anxiety and related disorders in this population.

We used Infra Red (IR) thermography to evaluate gender differences in local thermal regulation, assessing the response of 18 men and 16 women to a 30-second immersion of the dominant hand and digits in water maintained at 3-5degreesC. IR images-taken prior to immersion, immediately after withdrawal, at 15 second intervals for 5 minutes and 30-second intervals for the final 5 minutes -were analyzed to obtain surface temperature of the index finger and dorsum of the hand. Men had higher baseline temperatures than women in both hand and finger (P<0.01). Within sex, there were no hand-finger temperature differences. Immediately after withdrawal, temperatures showed that the finger had cooled more than the hand. The contralateral hand and finger showed a modest drop in temperature. After 10 minutes, men's and women's hands had rewarmed to 91.5 +/- 1% and 86.5 +/- 0.9% (m +/- SE) of baseline, respectively (p<0.001). Men's fingers rewarmed to 89.5 +/- 3.1%, while women's rewarmed to 77.0 +/- 3% (p<0.008). Although our data showed a broad spectrum of rewarming patterns, particularly in fingers, we were able to divide them into slow rewarmers (<90% return to baseline: 12 women, 5 men) and fast rewarmers (>90% of baseline: 13 men, 4 women). Fast rewarmers demonstrated a vasodilation absent in slow rewarmers. As the contralateral side showed a similar pattern, our data suggest that local rewarming is partly mediated by a reflex mechanism that is more prevalent and/or effective in men than women, possibly helping explain the higher incidence of cold-induced vasospastic disorder in women