Minority Stress and Stress Proliferation Among Same-Sex and Other Marginalized Couples

Drawing from 2 largely isolated approaches to the study of social stress—stress prolifera-tion and minority stress—the authors theorize about stress and mental health among same-sex couples. With this integrated stress framework, they hypothesized that couple-level minority stressors may be experienced by individual partners and jointly by couples as a result of the stigmatized status of their same-sex relationship—a novel concept. They also consider dyadic minority stress processes, which result from the relational experience of individual-level minority stressors between partners. Because this framework includes stressors emanating from both status-based (e.g., sexual minority) and role-based (e.g., partner) stress domains, it facilitates the study of stress proliferation linking minority stress (e.g., discrimination), more commonly expe-rienced relational stress (e.g., conflict), and mental health. This framework can be applied to the study of stress and health among other marginalized couples, such as interracial/ ethnic, interfaith, and age-discrepant couples