Bidirectional causal associations between same-sex attraction and psychological distress: Testing moderation and mediation effects

TY - JOUR

T1 - Bidirectional causal associations between same-sex attraction and psychological distress: Testing moderation and mediation effects

AU - Oginni, Olakunle Ayokunmi

AU - Lim, Kai

AU - Rahman, Qazi

AU - Jern, Patrick

AU - Grant, Thalia Eley

AU - Rijsdijk, Fruhling

N1 - Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge the ongoing contribution of the participants in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) and their families. TEDS is supported by a programme grant from the UK Medical Research Council to Thalia Eley (MR/V012878/1) and previously to Robert Plomin (MR/M021475/1). Funding Information: This project was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LQ20H120004) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82101158). Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).

PY - 2023/3

Y1 - 2023/3

N2 - Only one study has examined bidirectional causality between sexual minority status (having same-sex attraction) and psychological distress. We combined twin and genomic data from 8700 to 9700 participants in the UK Twins Early Development Study cohort at ≈21 years to replicate and extend these bidirectional causal effects using separate unidirectional Mendelian Randomization-Direction of Causation models. We further modified these models to separately investigate sex differences, moderation by childhood factors (retrospectively-assessed early-life adversity and prospectively-assessed childhood gender nonconformity), and mediation by victimization. All analyses were carried out in OpenMx in R. Same-sex attraction causally influenced psychological distress with significant reverse causation (beta = 0.19 and 0.17; 95% CIs = 0.09, 0.29 and 0.08, 0.25 respectively) and no significant sex differences. The same-sex attraction → psychological distress causal path was partly mediated by victimization (12.5%) while the reverse causal path was attenuated by higher childhood gender nonconformity (moderation coefficient = −0.09, 95% CI: −0.13, −0.04).

AB - Only one study has examined bidirectional causality between sexual minority status (having same-sex attraction) and psychological distress. We combined twin and genomic data from 8700 to 9700 participants in the UK Twins Early Development Study cohort at ≈21 years to replicate and extend these bidirectional causal effects using separate unidirectional Mendelian Randomization-Direction of Causation models. We further modified these models to separately investigate sex differences, moderation by childhood factors (retrospectively-assessed early-life adversity and prospectively-assessed childhood gender nonconformity), and mediation by victimization. All analyses were carried out in OpenMx in R. Same-sex attraction causally influenced psychological distress with significant reverse causation (beta = 0.19 and 0.17; 95% CIs = 0.09, 0.29 and 0.08, 0.25 respectively) and no significant sex differences. The same-sex attraction → psychological distress causal path was partly mediated by victimization (12.5%) while the reverse causal path was attenuated by higher childhood gender nonconformity (moderation coefficient = −0.09, 95% CI: −0.13, −0.04).

KW - Sexual orientation

KW - Same-sex attraction

KW - Psychological distress

KW - Genetics

KW - Twins

KW - Causality

KW - Minority stress

KW - Mediation

KW - Moderation

KW - Mendelian randomisation

KW - Lesbian, gay, bisexual

KW - LGBTQ+

KW - Mental health

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85144040262&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s10519-022-10130-x

DO - 10.1007/s10519-022-10130-x

M3 - Article

SN - 0001-8244

VL - 53

SP - 118

EP - 131

JO - Behavior Genetics

JF - Behavior Genetics

IS - 2

ER -