Minority Stress Theory

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Under the cloud of recent revelations that officials within the American Psychological Association (APA) colluded with Department of Defense officials to fashion ethical deadlines that did not constrain U.S. programs using enhanced interrogation (Hoffman, et.al., 2015), APA held their annual convention from August 6-9, 2015 in Toronto, Canada. Presentations spanned many diverse areas of psychology, including presentations on religion from the association’s Division 36: Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (DIV36). While most of the religion-focused presentations and posters concerned the use of religion in therapy sessions, the convention offered some fascinating research presentations on issues of nonreligion and secularity that would …show more content…

He noted that anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicidality are all different possible manifestations of a minority stress experience. To examine these experiences, he used the MADE scale in a study of more than 1,000 participants of ages 18-83. The scale consists of 24 items across five sub-scales of possible experiences atheists face. Below are the five sub-scales and their brief …show more content…

Zhen H. Cheng of University of Oregon discussed how America is “a very religious nation”, citing findings from Gallup polls that 86% of Americans believe in God. At the same time, while the nonreligious are a small number, their numbers have increased from 15.3% in 2007 to 19.6% in 2012. This growing disparity between the religious and nonreligious can lead to subtle biases coming through as microaggressions, defined by Cheng as “people’s everyday behaviors that are interpreted by members of a group as denigrating, invalidating, and prejudicial” (see also Wing, 2010). Scales regarding microaggressions and race, gender, and LGBTQ populations exist, but this was the first focused on nonreligious individuals, created by Cheng and colleagues to determine if microaggressions predicted negative mental health outcomes in nonreligious individuals. Their studies asked nonreligious individuals to note how often they experienced 109 possible microaggressions (such as “others have assumed that I am untrustworthy because of my lack of religion”). The items represented assumption of moral inferiority, denial of nonreligious prejudice, assumption of religiosity, and nonreligious

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