The Impact of Religious/Spiritual Struggles, Family Support, and LGBTQ+ Identity on Depression Among Emerging Adults in the United States

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College students—but particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) college students—face major developmental milestones in emerging adulthood related to navigating selfhood in the context of family and/or religious systems. We examined the relationships between religious/spiritual (R/S) struggles, family support, gender/sexual identity, and depression in a sample of 806 college students from a university in Southern Utah. Multiple regression analyses indicated that all six types of R/S struggles, family support, and gender/sexual identity were associated with depression. Meaning-related R/S struggles evidenced a stronger relationship than any other predictor with depression. Family support and sexuality/gender identity largely did not moderate the relationship between R/S struggles and depression, with one exception: moral struggles were more strongly related to depression among cisgender students than among LGBTQ+ students. LGBTQ+ students reported more depression and less family support than cisgender/heterosexual students. LGBTQ+ students reported significantly more divine, interpersonal, meaning, and doubt R/S struggles, whereas cisgender/heterosexual students reported higher demonic R/S struggles. We suggest that disparities in family support and R/S struggles contribute to differences in depression between LGBTQ+ and cisgender/heterosexual individuals. We discuss the potential importance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the most prevalent religion in the sample’s local context.

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