Exploring the Role of Telling Teachers About Identity-Based Harassment in Relation to Psychological Distress among a National Sample of Sexual and Gender Diverse Youth

Abstract

Extant research has explored factors that promote adolescents to seek help from school personnel when experiencing victimization. Yet, little is known about how reporting peer harassment to teachers and staff is associated with emotional distress among adolescents with stigmatized sexual and/or gender identities experiencing discriminatory harassment. The current study leveraged a large national sample of sexual and gender diverse youth (SGDY) who had experienced peer harassment in the past year (M_age = 15.44, SD = 1.36) and explored how talking with school personnel about harassment and perceptions of staff responses were associated with psychological distress. Structural equation modeling revealed that, over and above experiences of harassment, SGDY who talked with school personnel about their experienced harassment tended to report lower levels of psychological distress (β = −0.07, p < 0.001); however, the protection provided by reporting harassment was dampened among students experiencing frequent gender-based harassment (β _{never reported} = 0.14, p < 0.001; β _reported = 0.22, p < 0.001). Among youth who had reported, perceived reporting effectiveness moderated the association between gender-based harassment and distress (β = −0.06, p = 0.03), such that SGDY who experienced frequent gender-based harassment were less likely to report elevated psychological distress the more they felt that school personnel responded to their reports effectively. The associations between reporting experiences and psychological distress did not depend on sexuality- and gender-expression based harassment (β = 0.04, p = 0.14; β = −0.00, p = 0.95). These findings highlight a need for school systems to cultivate effective responses among school personnel when students report their experiences with discriminatory harassment.

Introduction

A growing body of scholarship demonstrates that sexual and gender diverse youth (SGDY) experience disproportionate amounts of school-based harassment compared to their cisgender and/or heterosexual peers (Myers et al., 2020). Often as a result of these experiences with harassment, SGDY report elevated mental health concerns compared to their cisgender and/or heterosexual peers (Fish et al., 2023; Kaufman et al., 2023). Supportive relationships with teachers and staff members at school represent an important developmental asset that SGDY can leverage to manage stressors when encountered at school (Bishop et al., 2023; Marshall et al., 2015; Poteat et al., 2021). One way that SGDY who experience peer harassment may receive support at school is by reporting their experiences to trusted teachers and/or staff members (Berger et al., 2019). In the general bullying literature (non-biased-based forms of bullying), empowering victims of bullying to confide in and report their experiences with victimization to teachers is a commonly recommended component of anti-bullying prevention programs (e.g., Novick & Isaacs, 2010). Despite the potential importance of reporting strategies, the role of reporting harassment in relation to mental health outcomes among SGDY experiencing harassment rooted in stigma is unknown. Thus, the current study investigated how SGDY reporting their experiences with harassment targeting their LGBTQ identities to school personnel, and the perceived effectiveness after the fact, might shape psychological distress.

Stigma-Based Harassment and Stress Buffering Theories

SGDY often experience social rejection in the form of peer harassment that targets their sexual and/or gender identities, which has been associated—over and above general forms of victimization—with psychological distress (Kurpiel, 2023; Poteat et al., 2011). In this study, we focused on three forms of stigma-based harassment: gender-based harassment (i.e., harassment rooted in gender identity), sexuality-based harassment (i.e., harassment targeting sexual identity), and gender expression-based harassment (i.e., harassment targeting perceived gender typicality). Such forms of harassment remain prevalent in schools, with national estimates reporting that most SGDY experience in-person verbal harassment based on sexual identity, gender identity, and gender expression at least once across a school year (i.e., 76.1%; Kosciw et al., 2022).

Minority stress (Brooks, 1981; Meyer, 2003) and stress buffering theories (Cohen & Wills, 1985) can help explain SGDY’s elevated vulnerabilities to emotional distress tied to their experiences with peer harassment. Both minority stress and stress buffering perspectives highlight the potential of life stressors to impair healthy psychosocial functioning among individuals. Minority stress theory, however, underscores that health disparities are not inevitable among SGDY but instead driven by their exposure to unique stressors specific to their marginalized identity (e.g., disclosing their identities) alongside general stressors any individual could experience in life (e.g., stressful school learning experiences). Unique minority stressors can be conceptualized as distal (e.g., peer harassment) and proximal (e.g., internalized stigma as a response to experiencing distal stress), which are compounded with general life stressors and directly impact SGDY’s psychosocial adjustment. Thus, peer harassment directly targeting a student’s marginalized SGD identity may be a particularly potent minority stressor that directly shapes the development of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and reduced coping resources among SGDY (Collier et al., 2013).

Both minority stress and stress buffering theories highlight the potential of social support to disrupt health impairment processes tied to chronic stress exposure (Meyer, 2003). However, contemporary models of stress buffering theories suggest that social support may exhibit more nuanced modifications (Rueger et al., 2016). That is, supportive relationships could 1) be more strongly related to lower mental health concerns at high levels of stress (i.e., stress buffering), 2) be weakly associated with lower mental health concerns at high levels of stress (i.e., stress dampening), or 3) not depend on the stress experience (i.e., general benefits; Rueger & Johnson, 2024). Put in the context of the current study, on one hand, SGDY who experience more frequent identity-based harassment in school may fare better in mental health when they seek out and feel they have obtained adequate support from a trusted teacher, staff member, or school psychologist (i.e., stress buffering). On the other hand, it is possible that these same SGDY may experience elevated levels of distress (i.e., stress dampening) or show universal protection from distress regardless of harassment (i.e., general benefits).

What further remains unclear is the extent to which these stress-modifying pathways are similar across various forms of harassment. By isolating the associations between gender-, sexuality-, and gender expression-based harassment and psychological distress, we can obtain a picture of how these unique stress-modifying pathways manifest across different harassment experiences. For example, might confiding in school personnel confer stronger protection from distress among students who experience frequent sexuality-based harassment (i.e., stress buffering) yet confer weaker protection among students who experience frequent gender-based harassment (i.e., stress dampening)? Such investigations can help inform low-cost recommendations and resource allocation for school administrations, teachers, and school psychologists to better support students who experience peer harassment.

Reporting Peer Harassment to School Personnel and Mental Health

Despite SGDY’s frequent experiences with stigma-based harassment, few disclose their harassment to teachers (McCauley et al., 2024), and they are also less willing to report their experiences to formal sources of support than their cisgender heterosexual peers (Kaufman & Baams, 2022). A number of barriers thwart SGDY from confiding in teachers about their harassment related experiences, such as fears of retaliation from perpetrators, reduced social standing, and having their identities forcibly disclosed (Kosciw et al., 2022). Peer victimization among SGDY in adolescence is often experienced in locations where the presence of formal sources of support may not be present (Kaufman & Baams, 2022), which may limit the availability of support for some SGDY to manage their harassment. Previous research has only recently begun to investigate factors that facilitate SGDY talking to their teachers about harassment (Berger et al., 2019; McCauley et al., 2024). Critical questions remain, such as when and how reporting harassment to teachers and the felt effectiveness of such behavior after the fact contributes to psychological distress in the face of harassment. Such facets of reporting may shed light on the emotional impacts tied to being a target of harassment. In the current study, we focused on the objective reporting of harassment (i.e., having talked with teachers) and the subjective evaluation of how effective these strategies are alongside SGDY’s experiences with stigma-based harassment and psychological distress.

Talking to teachers and staff members at school about harassment related experiences may be related to SGDY’s emotional distress. Minority stress and stress buffering perspectives (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Meyer, 2003) suggest that confiding in a teacher may be an adaptive strategy for some SGDY who experience harassment. Limited work, however, has specifically explored the reporting experiences of SGDY experiencing stigma-based harassment and often focuses on intentions or the willingness to seek help in stressful situations or seeking help in the context of intimate partner violence among SGD young adults (e.g., Scheer et al., 2023). Greater intentions or willingness to seek social support in response to various stressors are associated with a variety of positive adjustment indicators among both non-SGDY specific samples (see Heerde & Hemphill, 2018 for a meta-analysis; Robinson et al., 2021) and samples of SGDY (Mintz et al., 2021; Rivas-Koehl et al., 2022). In support of these findings, studies with general samples of adolescents have shown that seeking support to cope with victimization was, in general, associated with lower mental health concerns (Ma et al., 2018; Xie et al., 2022). In comparison, other research has found that help-seeking in response to victimization was associated with elevated symptoms of anxiety and emotional impact (Mendez et al., 2016; Visconti & Troop-Gordon, 2010) or even null effects (e.g., when considering cyber-victimization; Dooley et al., 2010).

The mixed findings of help-seeking experiences in response to victimization may be attributed to differences in study characteristics. For example, studies that use multi-item measures (e.g., Causey & Dubow, 1992, coping scale for victimization) prompt participants to reflect on how likely they would be to seek help from an adult if they were to experience victimization. Among samples of elementary school students (i.e., grade levels 3–5), studies that used multi-item measures found that students who used adult support-seeking strategies reported elevated loneliness (e.g., among boys, Kochenderfer-Ladd & Skinner, 2002) and anxiety symptoms (Visconti & Troop-Gordon, 2010). However, samples of early- to mid-adolescents in Taiwan and China that used similar measures found that seeking help from adults was associated with lower psychological distress (Ma et al., 2018) and depressive symptoms (Xie et al., 2022) over and above the effects of peer victimization.

Other studies have used binary measures that directly ask whether a student has or has not talked with a teacher or staff member about their experienced victimization. In one cross-sectional study of 3,305 adolescents in grades 5–12, students who reported racially motivated peer harassment to a teacher at school reported more negative emotionality compared to students who did not report their harassment (Mendez et al., 2016); however, the same study did not control for the frequency of harassment, which could make it difficult to determine whether negative emotionality was uniquely driven by seeking support from school personnel or confounded with harassment related experiences. In comparison, another cross-sectional study of 5,959 Australian and Austrian adolescents found that telling an adult about victimization was unrelated to psychosomatic and depressive symptoms when controlling for in-person and online peer victimization (Dooley et al., 2010). Collectively, the extent to which reporting peer harassment to an adult at school can protect against adverse mental health outcomes varies across study samples, measurement, form of victimization (e.g., bias-based versus non-bias-based), and analytic approach. It is critical we continue to explore how these behaviors can shape the mental health experiences of various targets of harassment, particularly among student populations where this research is relatively nascent (i.e., SGDY) and who continue to remain disproportionately impacted by discriminatory harassment.

The Role of Telling School Personnel in the Face of Harassment

Over and above the main effects of reporting, SGDY who can talk with their teachers about their experiences with harassment may especially benefit from this social connection in ways that can buffer against the resulting psychological distress; when students talk to their teachers, they are able to connect youth to resources, offer advice, and effectively intervene. At the same time, talking with teachers about harassment may expose some SGDY to even more stigma that can undermine the benefits of such behavior and may inadvertently amplify distress tied to harassment (e.g., victim blaming and disproportionate discipline; Horn & Schriber, 2020).

Indeed, mixed evidence on the buffering role of reporting victimization to school personnel is evident in the general bullying literature. For example, one longitudinal study of 316 Australian students in grades 7 to 9 investigated whether telling a teacher about experienced victimization at the start of the school year (i.e., with a yes/no binary measures of reporting) would buffer against elevated depressive symptoms at the end of the school year (Shaw et al., 2019). The study found that when students experienced more severe forms of victimization (i.e., defined by higher frequency, chronicity, and emotional impact), they tended to fare better in mental health if they had reported their victimization to school personnel; however, these stress buffering effects were not present among students who experienced less severe amounts victimization, who tended to fare worse in mental health when they reported their victimization to school personnel (Shaw et al., 2019).

Another study of 1,634 Chinese students in grades 7 to 9 cross-sectionally examined whether reporting victimization to adults (i.e., with a multi-item measure of reporting) would moderate the association between peer victimization and depressive symptoms (Xie et al., 2022). The study found that reporting victimization to school personnel buffered against high levels of depressive symptoms when students reported low levels of victimization, yet these stress buffering effects were washed out when students reported high levels of victimization. Such findings present a conflicting picture wherein, in some cases, it was the students who experienced the greatest levels of stress who benefited the most from reporting victimization to school personnel (i.e., stress buffering; Shaw et al., 2019), whereas in other cases, it was the students who experienced lower levels of stress who reaped the largest protective benefits from reporting (i.e., stress dampening; Xie et al., 2022). Critically, these associations remain untested in the stigma-based literature. Given the diversity in training among school personnel to intervene in harassment related experiences among LGBTQ students (Greytak et al., 2016), there could be distinct patterns in the protection linked to reporting experiences across unique forms of harassment targeting SGD identities.

Collectively, extant literature suggests that evidence needs to be clearer on the protective and stress-buffering capabilities of SGDY telling teachers about their harassment related experiences. One way to garner clarity in the reporting experiences of SGDY, who are also targets of stigma-based harassment, could be to explore how effective they felt such support was after reporting. A narrow focus on the extent to which adolescents have reported their harassment, or whether they have ever done so, can obscure insights from SGDY’s subjective experience that could meaningfully shape their psychological distress. Asking SGDY to reflect on how effective they felt talking to a teacher could provide a lens to examine how adaptive such strategies can be and the circumstances in which they may promote resilience in the face of gender-based harassment (cf. Newman, 2008). By exploring the felt effectiveness of reporting harassment alongside objective reporting experiences, we will not only better understand the link between stigma-based harassment and psychological distress (i.e., objective reporting experiences) but also gather initial evidence on when such responses are contributing to associations between harassment and psychological distress (i.e., felt effectiveness).

Current Study

Extant research has identified factors that facilitate adolescents speaking with school personnel about their harassment related experiences. Little research, however, has explored whether confiding in school personnel mitigates adolescents’ psychological distress in the face of harassment; moreover, to the best of our knowledge, no study has quantitatively explored these relationships among SGDY—a student population with unique barriers to reporting harassment. Drawing on minority stress and stress buffering theories (Brooks, 1981; Cohen & Wills, 1985; Meyer et al., 2003), the purpose of the current study was three-fold and guided by the following overarching questions; 1) To what extent is reporting harassment to teachers uniquely associated with psychological distress among SGDY experiencing stigma-based harassment in the past year?, 2) To what extent does reporting harassment to teachers moderate the associations between stigma-based harassment and psychological distress?, and 3) Among SGDY who have reported their harassment to a teacher, to what extent does the perceived effectiveness of teacher responses to the reporting uniquely contribute to or interact with harassment related experiences to mitigate psychological distress?

For the first research question, we hypothesized that SGDY who reported talking with their teachers about harassment would, in general, report lower levels of psychological distress compared to youth who have not talked with a teacher. For the second research question, we hypothesized that reporting harassment to teachers would moderate the association between stigma-based harassment and psychological distress; however, given the lack of evidence in the stigma-based harassment literature, no directional predictions were made about this modifying association. For the third research question, we hypothesized that, among the subsample of SGDY who have reported harassment to a teacher, their perceived effectiveness of reporting would be associated with lower levels of psychological distress. Given that contemporary stress buffering perspectives highlight the potential presence of general, stress buffering, and stress dampening models of social support (Rueger et al., 2016; Rueger & Johnson, 2024), we also explored whether the perceived effectiveness of reporting harassment would interact with any of the three forms of harassment to shape psychological distress.

Method

Procedure and Sample

We used data from the LGBTQ National Teen Survey that we collected between February and October 2022 in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). A total of 17,578 respondents met all inclusion criteria (i.e., identified as LGBTQ, lived in the U.S., and were aged 13–18). Participants were recruited online and in person via word of mouth, using targeted ads for LGBTQ+ youth, and posts by social media influencers on various social media platforms. Automatic verification was provided for adolescents with valid K-12 or college school e-mail addresses. Adolescents without a school e-mail address were asked to send a verified photo ID (with the option to redact their photo) or video chat with one of two research assistants to verify their identity in a way that kept them anonymous. All validated participants received a $5 Amazon or Starbucks gift card for their participation. After assenting to study procedures, participants responded to questions on demographics and then completed measures on gender, sexuality, family, school, and health experiences. For the current study, the sample was restricted to SGDY who self-reported being in grades 5–12, who attended a private, charter, or public school, and who reported experiencing at least one form of harassment targeting their sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression in the past year (N = 7,938). From this final sample, 28.9% of students (n = 2,283) indicated they had talked with a teacher or staff member about harassment and, thus, comprised the analytic subsample of SGDY for the final research question. See Table 1 for more detailed demographic characteristics. All procedures were approved by the University of Connecticut IRB, including a parental waiver of consent.

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics of the Sample

	N = 7,938
	n	%
Sexual Identity
Gay or lesbian	2433	30.7
Bisexual	2061	26.0
Queer	814	10.3
Pansexual	1219	15.4
Asexual	637	8.0
Questioning	259	3.3
Something else	515	6.5
Gender Identity
Cisgender boy	1246	15.7
Cisgender girl	1018	12.8
Transgender girl	536	6.8
Transgender boy	1693	21.3
Nonbinary	2742	34.5
Questioning	501	6.3
Something else	173	2.2
Missing	29	0.4
Racial Identity
Native American	116	1.5
Asian American/Pacific Islander	285	3.3
Black	417	5.3
White	5769	72.7
Something else	506	6.4
Multiracial	821	10.3
Missing	24	0.3
Ethnic Identity
Hispanic/Latine	1366	17.2
Non-Hispanic	6561	82.7
Missing	11	0.1
Highest Caregiver Education
Less than high school	232	2.9
High school or GED	913	11.5
Vocational/technical	186	2.3
Some college	998	12.6
College graduate	2879	36.3
Postgraduate degree	2035	25.6
Missing/Don’t know/No caregivers	695	8.8
Region
Northeast	1036	13.1
Midwest	1546	19.5
South	2001	25.2
West	1402	17.7
Missing	1953	24.6
Age	M = 15.44	SD = 1.36

Measures

Demographics

Two separate questions were used for participants to report their racial/ethnic identity. To assess ethnicity, participants were asked, “Are you Hispanic or Latina/e/o/x?” The response options were “No” and “Yes.” To assess racial identity, participants were asked, “What is your race (select all that apply)?” Response options were “American Indian or Alaskan Native,” “Asian,” “Black or African American,” “Hawaiian Native/Pacific Islander,” “White”, “None of these.” The measures of racial and ethnic identities were modeled after the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (Brenner, 2024). Participants also reported their caregivers’ highest education level, which we used as a proxy for socioeconomic status (Lien et al., 2001).

Participants were also asked to report their sexual orientation with the following response options: “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual,” “straight/heterosexual,” “queer,” “pansexual,” “asexual,” “questioning,” and “something not listed.” Participants who wrote in an identity that matched a category listed were back-coded into that category. The assessment of sexual identity is a commonly recommend practice among adolescent samples when balancing spatial constraints in more time extensive health surveys (Sherwood et al., 2024). We modeled the measure after state-wide school surveys (i.e., Minnesota Student Survey; Gower et al., 2024) to capture a greater diversity in response options.

Gender identity is separate from sexual identity (Veldhuis et al., 2024). To assess gender identity, participants were asked to check all that apply to them with the following options: “cisgender boy,” “cisgender girl,” “transgender girl,” “transgender boy,” “gender non-conforming,” “genderqueer,” “gender fluid,” “nonbinary,” “questioning,” and “different identity not listed.” Participants who selected “different identity not listed” were given the option to write in their gender identity, and adolescents who selected multiple options were asked to indicate which identity best described them. Participants who wrote in a gender identity that matched a category listed were back-coded into that category. We provided more comprehensive response options and selection to account for the diversity and complexity of gender identity among adolescents (Watson et al., 2020). It should also be noted that we developed the demographic questions in collaboration with the HRC, who involved numerous youth community leaders in the development of the survey.

Identity-Based Harassment

To assess peer victimization, participants first read a brief definition of bullying. Participants were then asked to report with three items how often in the past twelve months they had been teased, bullied, or treated badly by other students at their school because of their: 1) sexual orientation, 2) gender identity, and 3) gender expression (Puhl & Luedicke, 2012). Responses across all three forms of harassment ranged from 0 (never) to 4 (very often). Participants who did not experience any of the three forms of harassment in the past twelve months were not included in the analysis. Previous research using this measure has shown these items to be individually correlated with various psychosocial health outcomes (e.g., school safety; Lessard et al., 2020b). Further, extant work has demonstrated that these three items are moderately correlated with one another (r ranging from 0.43–0.55; Lessard et al., 2020a), which is similar to the current study (r ranging from 0.40–0.43). Thus, these items are related yet distinct constructs.

Reporting Harassment to Teachers or Staff

To assess help-seeking in response to stigma-based harassment, participants were asked “Have you ever talked to a teacher and/or staff member at school about being bullied, teased, threatened or harassed for being LGBTQ?” The response options were 0 (no) and 1 (yes). This item was modeled after research in the general bullying literature (i.e., non-bias-based forms of victimization) that used similar binary coded items, which have been correlated longitudinally with psychological distress among general samples of adolescents (Shaw et al., 2019). We developed this item to reflect experiences with telling an adult at school about harassment specifically targeting sexual and gender diverse identities.

Perceived Effectiveness of Reporting Harassment

The effectiveness of reporting harassment was assessed by asking participants to reflect on how helpful talking to a teacher or staff member was about their harassment (Palmer & Greytak, 2017). Specifically, if participants reported they had ever talked to a teacher about being bullied for being LGBTQ they were subsequently asked “What was the result of talking to this teacher/staff in school about being bullied, teased, threatened or harassed for being LGBTQ?”. Similar single item measures have been used in previous research on SGDY to explore the associations between perceptions of effective responses from school personnel to reported harassment and disproportionate discipline (Palmer & Greytak, 2017). Of note, a student may perceive staff responses to their reported harassment as effective generally, yet the same staff response may not perfectly reflect how helped the student felt. As such, we modified the wording of the response options to denote helpfulness as an indicator of effectiveness to better capture SGDY’s subjective experiences of how effective and supportive they perceived school personnel responded to their reported harassment. Response options raged from 1 (Didn’t help me at all) to 4 (Helped me a lot). Higher scores corresponded to higher perceived effectiveness

Psychological Distress

Depressive Symptoms.

Two items from the four-item brief patient health questionnaire (i.e., PHQ-2; Kroenke et al., 2009) were used to assess depressive symptoms. The PHQ-2 is a well validated screener used to detect elevated depressive symptoms across clinical and non-clinical settings (Caro-Fuentes & Sanabria-Mazo, 2023). In adolescent samples, the screener has been found to have a sensitivity of 96% and specificity of 82% in accordance with the PHQ-9, showing comparable utility to more extensive measures of depressive symptoms (Richardson et al., 2010). Participants were asked to rate how bothered they were with various symptoms of depression (e.g., feeling down, depressed, or hopeless) over the past two weeks. The two items from the depression subscale ranged from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day) and were significantly correlated (r = 0.65). A mean score was computed with possible scores ranging from 0–3. Internal consistency in the current sample was good (α = 0.79) and comparable to the original publication of the scale (α = 0.81; Kroenke et al., 2009).

Anxiety Symptoms.

Two items from the four-item brief patient health questionnaire (i.e., GAD-2; Kroenke et al., 2009) were used to assess anxiety symptoms. The GAD-2 is a commonly used screener to detect elevated anxiety symptoms across clinical and non-clinical settings. The GAD-2 has demonstrated adequate convergent, construct, and discriminant validity among younger samples and shows comparable performance to more extensive measures of anxiety symptoms (Byrd-Bredbenner et al., 2021). Participants were asked to rate how bothered they were with various symptoms of anxiety (e.g., feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge) over the past two weeks. The two items from the anxiety subscale ranged from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day) and were significantly correlated (r = 0.75). A mean score was computed with possible scores ranging from 0–3. Internal consistency in the current sample was good (α = 0.86) and comparable to the original publication of the scale (α = 0.82; Kroenke et al., 2009).

Stress Management.

We assessed stress management with a single-item measure that asked participants to reflect on their effectiveness in managing stress levels over the past 30 days (Nelson et al., 2008). Specifically, participants were asked, “On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being ineffective and 10 being effective, how would you rate your ability to manage stress in the past 30 days?” Possible scores ranged from 1 (very poor) to 10 (excellent). Higher scores corresponded to better stress management. Similar single-item stress management measures have demonstrated comparable validity and reliability to multi-item stress assessments (Littman et al., 2006). Furthermore, given the extensive nature of the survey, we opted to use a single-item measure to mitigate potential survey fatigue among our participants.

Analysis Plan

Using SPSS v29, we first examined descriptive information on SGDY’s experiences with identity-based harassment, lifetime reporting to teachers, and the perceived effectiveness of reporting harassment. We also examined bivariate correlations between key variables of interest. To evaluate our primary research questions, we used latent variable structural equation modeling in Mplus v8.1. Prior to constructing the structural equation models, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to examine the validity of the latent factor of psychological distress. Of note, the CFA for the main effect (i.e., model ‘a’) and interactive models (model ‘c’) were saturated. For the multigroup model (i.e., model ‘b’), we tested for measurement invariance to ensure that factor loadings and structure were similar across groups. Similar to others, we established invariance by examining whether changes in the comparative fit index (CFI) were below 0.01 when constraining factor loadings (metric invariance) and factor intercepts (scalar invariance) to be equal across groups (Pollitt et al., 2023). We evaluated changes in CFI as it has been shown to be less biased to large sample sizes compared to other fit indices (Cheung & Rensvold, 2002).

After establishing the factorial validity of the latent construct, a set of three structural equation models were constructed. For our first research question, we examined the main effect of reporting harassment to teachers and psychological distress while controlling for the three forms of stigma-based harassment and demographic covariates (i.e., main effect model). For our second research question, we conducted a multigroup analysis to examine how the associations between gender-, sexuality-, and gender expression-based harassment and psychological distress varied across SGDY who had and had not reported their harassment to teachers (i.e., multigroup model). The multigroup analysis was estimated with TYPE = MIXTURE, and the KNOWN CLASS command was used to define two classes of SGDY: those who have reported (i.e., 1) and those who never reported (i.e., 2). With the MODEL TEST command, we conducted a Wald test of parameter constraints to evaluate whether the association between the three forms of stigma-based harassment and psychological distress varied across the two groups of SGDY (Bauman et al., 2013). For our last research question, we examined the main effect of the perceived effectiveness of reporting harassment and the interaction with the three forms of stigma-based harassment on psychological distress among the subsample of SGDY who indicated they had reported their harassment to teachers (i.e., interactive model; n = 2,283). All continuous variables were grand mean-centered before computing product terms and entered into the model as such to facilitate interpretation (Hayes & Matthes, 2009).

We evaluated model fit using the root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), and the standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) (Hu & Bentler, 1999). We deemed model fit as adequate when RMSEA values were lower than or equal to 0.06, SRMR values were lower than or equal to 0.08, and CFI and TLI values were greater than or equal to 0.90 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). All models included highest caregiver education, age, sexual identity, gender identity, racial-ethnic identity, and country region as covariates. Categorical covariates were binary coded with non-Hispanic, white, gay/lesbian, cisgender, and south serving as reference groups. Missing data across all modeled variables ranged from 0.1 to 18.3% and was primarily from the stress management (18.3%) and depressive symptom items (17.3%), which was primarily due to early survey termination. We addressed missingness using full information maximum likelihood (FIML) with robust standard errors to account for non-normality (Enders, 2001). FIML allows each individual participant to contribute any available data to the likelihood function and is preferable to listwise deletion (Enders & Bandalos, 2001). It should be noted that the pattern of results was replicated using listwise deletion.

Results

Descriptives

The sample was, on average, 15.44 years old (SD = 1.36) and was primarily comprised of white (72.7%), non-Hispanic (82.7%), lesbian/gay (30.7%), and nonbinary (34.5%) adolescents. Participants also primarily resided in the Southern region of the U.S (25.2%) and reported that their caregivers were college graduates (36.3%). On average, SGDY reported sometimes experiencing gender-based harassment (M = 1.29, SD = 1.23), sexuality-based harassment (M = 1.63, SD = 1.19), and gender expression-based harassment (M = 1.48, SD = 1.16). SGDY in the sample also reported elevated levels of depressive (M = 1.62, SD = 0.95) and anxiety (M = 1.84, SD = 0.93) symptoms, and relatively low self-reported abilities to manage stress (M = 3.91, SD = 2.14). Additionally, 28.9% of SGDY reported that they had talked to a teacher or staff member about being bullied based on their SGDY identity. Of these SGDY who spoke with a teacher, the majority reported that their teachers only somewhat helped them (34.9%), followed by SGDY who indicated their teachers did not help them at all (23.1%), and helped them very little (22.6%). Only 19.4% of SGDY reported that talking with a teacher helped them a lot. Bivariate correlations across variables of interest are presented in Table 2.

Table 2.

Means and Bivariate Correlations Across Variables of Interest

	1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.	7.	8.
1. Stress management	--
2. Anxiety symptoms	−.55***	--
3. Depressive symptoms	−.54***	.57***	--
4. Gender-based harassment	−.18***	.22***	.23***	--
5. Sexuality-based harassment	−.12***	.17***	.17***	.43***	--
6. Gender-expression based harassment	−.09***	.15***	.16***	.41***	.40***	--
7. Reporting harassment	−.01	.05***	.04**	.32***	.28***	.21***	--
8. aPerceived reporting effectiveness	.16***	−.16***	−.13***	−.18***	−.14***	−.08***	--	--
Range	1–10	0–3	0–3	0–4	0–4	0–4	0–1	1–4
M (SD)	3.91 (2.14)	1.84 (0.93)	1.62 (0.95)	1.29 (1.23)	1.63 (1.19)	1.48 (1.16)	-- --	2.51 (1.05)
Skewness	.65	−.19	−.00	.60	.36	.45	--	−.11
Kurtosis	−.17	−1.17	−1.13	−.66	−.67	−.52	--	−1.19

Note.

^aThis row of correlations was only computed among the subsample of SGDY who indicated they had talked with school personnel about harassment (n = 2,283). Reporting = Reporting harassment to teachers/staff at school (ref = never reported).

^***p <0.001,

^**p < 0.01

Structural Equation Models

Latent Construct of Psychological Distress

Before interpreting the SEM models, we first evaluated the factorial validity of the psychological distress latent variable. The measurement models for the main effects analysis (i.e., model ‘a’) and the interactive analysis (i.e., model ‘c’) were saturated (CFI = 1.00; TLI = 1.00; RMSEA = 0.00; RMSEA CI [0.00, 0.00]; SRMR = 0.00). Across both the main effect and interactive models, depressive symptoms (λ = 0.75; λ = 0.74, respectively), anxiety symptoms (λ = 0.76; λ = 0.77, respectively), and stress management (λ = −0.72; λ = −0.70, respectively) loaded strongly onto the latent factor of psychological distress. The measurement model for the multigroup analysis (i.e., model ‘b’) also demonstrated good fit as indicated by common standards (CFI = 0.997; TLI = 0.996; RMSEA = 0.031; RMSEA CI [0.017, 0.047]; SRMR = 0.014; Hu & Bentler, 1999) and the three indicators loaded strongly onto the latent factor of psychological distress for both groups (see supplemental table 1 for factor loadings). Further, measure invariance was established as indicated by changes in CFI < 0.01 across configural, metric, and scalar models; this provides some evidence that the three indicators loaded onto the latent factor to the same degree across SGDY who had and had not reported harassment to school personnel (see supplemental table 2).

Since the indicators of psychological distress demonstrated strong and significant standardized factor loadings across all three models, we proceeded with the use of SEM. The main effects and multigroup models consisted of the full sample of SGDY (N = 7,938). The interactive model consisted of a subset of SGDY who indicated they had talked to a teacher or staff member about their harassment (N = 2,283).

Main Effects Model

For our first aim, we examined the main effect of reporting harassment to school personnel in relation to psychological distress while controlling for identity-based harassment. As seen in Figure 1, the results for the main effects of identity-based harassment and reporting harassment to teachers are reported in model ‘a’. The model demonstrated good fit as indicated by several indices and common standards (CFI = 0.983; TLI = 0.972; RMSEA = 0.025; RMSEA CI [0.021, 0.029]; SRMR = 0.010; Hu & Bentler, 1999). After adjusting for covariates, more frequent gender-based harassment (β = 0.17, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001), sexuality-based harassment (β = 0.12, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001), and gender expression-based harassment (β = 0.06, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) were associated with higher levels of psychological distress. However, over and above the influences of the demographic covariates and harassment, having talked to teachers and school staff about LGBTQ-related harassment was associated with lower levels of psychological distress (β = −0.07, SE = 0.01, p < 0.001).

Figure 1. Structural Equation Models of SGDY Reporting Harassment to School Personnel.

Note. All models controlled for region, age, highest caregiver education, sexual identity, gender identity, and racial-ethnic identity. Standardized coefficients are reported. ^aDenotes a significant difference in the path coefficient between groups in panel ‘b’. Panel ‘c’ only included the subsample of SGDY who indicated they had told a teacher about their harassment (n = 2,283). Dashed lines represent non-significant paths *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001..

Multigroup Model

In the second aim, we examined how reporting harassment to school personnel modified the associations between the three forms of identity-based harassment and psychological distress via a multigroup approach. The results for the fully unconstrained multigroup model that compared the associations between gender-based harassment and psychological distress across SGDY who had and had not reported their harassment to teachers are reported in model ‘b’. After adjusting for demographic covariates, more frequent gender-based harassment was associated with higher levels of psychological distress among SGDY who had (β = 0.22, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001) and had not (β = 0.14, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) reported talking to teachers about harassment. More frequent sexuality-based harassment was also associated with higher levels of psychological distress among SGDY who had (β = 0.10, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001) and had not (β = 0.12, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) reported talking to teachers about harassment; yet, gender expression-based harassment was only significantly associated with higher psychological distress among SGDY who had never reported talking to school personnel about harassment (β = 0.06, SE = 0.02, p < 0.01). The Wald test of parameter constraints was only significant for gender-based harassment (χ[1] = 5.05, p < 0.05), suggesting that the association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress was stronger among SGDY who had reported talking to their teachers about harassment compared to SGDY who had not.

Interactive Model

For our last aim, we examined how perceptions of reporting effectiveness to school personnel moderated the associations between the three forms of identity-based harassment and psychological distress among the subsample of SGDY who had reported harassment to school personnel (n = 2,283). The results for the interactive model among the subsample of SGDY who reported their harassment to teachers are presented in model ‘c’. The model demonstrated good fit as indicated by several indices and common standards (CFI = 0.968; TLI = 0.949; RMSEA = 0.030; RMSEA CI [0.023, 0.037]; SRMR = 0.012; Hu & Bentler, 1999). As expected, among SGDY who reported their harassment to teachers, more frequent gender-based harassment (β = 0.24, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001) and sexuality-based harassment (β = 0.10, SE = 0.03, p < 0.01) were associated with higher levels of psychological distress. However, gender expression-based harassment was not significantly associated with psychological distress (β = 0.04, SE = 0.03, p = 0.15). Perceiving higher levels of reporting effectiveness after talking with teachers about harassment was associated with lower levels of psychological distress (β = −0.13, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001).

The association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress was qualified by a two-way interaction with perceived reporting effectiveness (β = −0.06, SE = 0.03, p = 0.03). A test of simple slopes showed that the association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress was strongest among participants who reported school personnel were less effective in handling their reports of harassment (−1 SD away from mean: b = 0.16, SE = 0.02, p < 0.001) and weakest among participants who reported that school personnel were highly effective in handling their reports of harassment (+1 SD away from mean: b = 0.09, SE = 0.03, p < 0.001). The two-way interactions of sexuality- (β = 0.04, SE = 0.03, p = 0.14) and gender expression-based (β = −0.00, SE = 0.03, p = 0.95) harassment with perceived reporting effectiveness were not significant.

Discussion

Informed by previous research in the general bullying literature, the current study explored the role of reporting harassment to school personnel and the perceived effectiveness of these reports in the mental health of SGDY experiencing harassment targeting their LGBTQ identities. Whereas reporting harassment to teachers was associated with lower psychological distress, the association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress was stronger among SGDY who reported talking to a teacher about their experiences. Critically, however, SGDY who perceived greater effectiveness in their reports tended to report lower levels of psychological distress regardless of their sexuality- and gender expression-based harassment-related experiences; moreover, effective teacher responses buffered the association between gender-based harassment and distress. These findings extend the literature in critical ways. Few studies have explored the role of objective help-seeking in response to victimization in adolescents’ psychological distress, and no study, to the best of our knowledge, has quantitatively explored these associations among SGDY experiencing forms of stigma-based harassment; further, the current study examined objective reporting behavior and subjective experiences of reporting effectiveness simultaneously, which provides a more comprehensive picture of evidence.

The Main Effect of Telling Teachers and Staff About Harassment

Our findings suggest that talking with teachers about harassment-related experiences may be meaningfully related to SGDY’s psychological distress. SGDY who reported talking with teachers about their experiences with stigma-based harassment in general reported lower levels of psychological distress. This finding conflicts with some previous research that found seeking help from adults at school was longitudinally associated with anxiety symptoms (e.g., among students in middle childhood; Visconti & Troop-Gordon, 2010) and concurrently with heightened emotional impact following harassment experiences (Mendez et al., 2016). Critically, the direct relationship between talking with school personnel about harassment and psychological distress also corroborates previous research showing that, when considered independently, adolescents who engage in or are more willing to use problem-focused coping strategies (i.e., seek support) in response to school-related stressors fare better in the face of victimization (Robinson et al., 2021; Xie et al., 2022). The general protective nature of help-seeking in response to victimization may then also extend to forms of discriminatory harassment targeting SGD identities.

The difference in patterns could be reflective of developmental changes that facilitate more adaptive help-seeking among adolescents compared to students in middle to late childhood (Kochenderfer-Ladd & Skinner, 2002; Visconti & Troop-Gordon, 2010), such as changes in cognitive development and school structure (Newman, 2008). Measurement could also be another explanation, such that reporting to school personnel may be associated with elevated acute emotional experiences directly after the harassment experience (Mendez et al., 2016) yet lower levels of more general chronic indicators of distress (e.g., depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and stress management). In addition, it may be that reporting peer victimization to school personnel may operate differently for SGDY compared to more general samples of adolescents. Some studies have found that SGDY reported more social isolation at school and less connection to their peers than their cisgender-heterosexual counterparts (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2012; Taliaferro & Muehlenkamp, 2017). Thus, teachers and other staff members may serve as critical lines of support for SGDY among youth experiencing harassment (Marshal et al., 2015), insofar they can compensate for a lack of support from classmates; however, further testing is needed to confirm this.

Telling Teachers and Staff About Harassment as a Moderator

More nuance in reporting harassment to school personnel and the relation to psychological distress emerged from the multigroup analyses. Whereas SGDY’s psychological distress tied to sexuality- and gender expression-based harassment did not depend on whether they reported their harassment to school personnel, the association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress was moderated by reporting status. That is, gender-based harassment was more strongly related to psychological distress among students who reported talking to a teacher or staff member about harassment. These findings align more closely with contemporary models of stress buffering theories (Rueger & Johnson, 2024) than with minority stress theory (Meyer, 2003). Although reporting harassment to school personnel demonstrated general protection for SGDY regardless of peer harassment, this protection was dampened among SGDY experiencing more frequent gender-based harassment.

An explanation for this stress dampening relationship remains unclear, yet is in line with previous research among general samples of youth and adolescents (Kochenderfer-Ladd & Skinner, 2002; Xie et al., 2022). It may be that some SGDY who are targets of harassment and who sought help from school staff experienced even more stigma from the same adults they sought support from (Horn & Schriber, 2020); likewise, it could be that these SGDY experienced a more significant loss in social standing among their peers, leading to heightened social isolation and distress after seeking help from a teacher (Kochenderfer-Ladd & Skinner, 2002). Given the cross-sectional nature of the study, it could also be that we captured youth reporting harassment to teachers at a moment when they were experiencing more severe forms of harassment and psychological distress (Shaw et al., 2019). For example, SGDY who experienced more frequent gender-based harassment and reported to school personnel may have reached out for help when their symptoms of distress reached a point that exceeded their ability to cope independently, which may have been part of the reason they decided to talk with school personnel in the first place (cf. McDermott et al., 2018). Importantly, this is not to say that SGDY should not seek help from teachers to manage their experiences with harassment. Instead, this finding underscores the urgency of future research to longitudinally explore the mechanisms that underlie these associations to understand when and how help-seeking in response to harassment can promote positive mental health outcomes, which can subsequently inform our promotion of such strategies across school systems.

Perceptions of Effective Teacher and Staff Responses as a Moderator

A notable and novel strength of the current study was the inclusion of subjective reporting experiences alongside the objective reporting experiences of SGDY. Although the association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress was stronger among SGDY who reported their harassment, among those who did speak with school personnel, feeling that a teacher or staff member helped them buffered against elevated psychological distress tied to frequent gender-based harassment. This finding supports minority stress theory, showing that supportive responses from school personnel in response to discussing harassment with them can buffer against adverse mental health outcomes tied to minority stressors (Meyer, 2003). Similar to the multigroup analysis, however, the strength of the relationship between effective teacher responses and lower levels of psychological distress did not depend on sexuality- and gender expression-based harassment, showing evidence for a general benefits model of social support for different forms of harassment (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Rueger & Johnson, 2024). These findings may suggest that protection from effective teacher responses is similar across different levels of sexuality- and gender expression-based harassment but may be more sensitive to harassment based on gender identity.

It is unclear why only the association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress depended on reporting status and responses from school personnel. Although we can only speculate, one explanation could be disparities in professional development and staff efficacy in confronting harassment targeting gender identity (Greytak et al., 2016; Williams & Brömdal, 2024). Prior work has found that school personnel are more likely to receive training related to managing lesbian, gay, and bisexual student issues (32.9%) than training on gender diverse student issues (23.6%; Greytak et al., 2016). We suspect that these disparities in professional development could signal more explicit guidance on how school personnel can effectively intervene when witnessing harassment motivated by sexuality that, as a result, contributes to less pronounced differences in distress and more uniform protection across different harassment experiences. Yet, a lack of training and alignment between policy and practice when managing gender diverse student issues (Martino et al., 2022) could give way to more bias from school personnel in how they respond to and help students overcome harassment targeting gender identity, thereby contributing to more pronounced differences in psychological distress across different levels of harassment.

Furthermore, the distinct patterns across our measures underscore the importance of examining discrete support-seeking behaviors to peer harassment alongside students’ perceptions of how effective they felt the support they received was. Previous work has found mixed evidence when discrete reporting experiences are assessed as modifiers in the association between victimization and mental health outcomes (e.g., Shaw et al., 2019; Xie et al., 2022). Our findings extend this research and suggest that solely focusing on whether, or the degree to which, a student has disclosed victimization to school personnel may paint an incomplete picture of these experiences. In the case of gender-based harassment, students who experienced frequent harassment and who talked with school personnel about these experiences reported better mental health if they received adequate support. Thus, it may not be solely whether a student has or has not reported to school personnel but rather how well teachers, staff members, and school psychologists can meet the needs of the student and effectively mitigate the stressor at hand that determines whether reporting to school personnel can promote resilience in the face of harassment (Newman, 2008).

Practice Implications

Collectively, the findings have implications to better understand the subsequent emotional impacts of students who report harassment to school personnel. It is important to note that, by conventional standards, our effect sizes were generally considered small (Durlak, 2009); however, these estimates somewhat mirror previous research that examined the association between willingness to seek help from adults at school for victimization and depressive symptoms (e.g., estimates ranging from = −0.14 to −0.19; Robinson et al., 2021) and the associations between sexuality-, gender-, and gender expression-based harassment and psychological distress (e.g., βs ranging from 0.05 to 0.15; Lessard et al., 2020a). Still, even small effects in a large sample, and when generalized to the broader population, can have meaningful implications for school systems (Götz et al., 2022). In this case, our findings underscore the importance of supporting students who decide to seek help for harassment and cultivating effective staff responses.

An important question, then, is how can we foster effective responses to harassment related experiences from school personnel when SGDY do decide to report harassment? We suggest that a better understanding of school personnel’s responses to SGDY’s reports of harassment across varying school contexts could be a promising avenue to answer this question. Some teachers and other staff members at school may feel unequipped to handle reports of stigma-based harassment, which may partially be driven by a lack of knowledge and training related to LGBTQ student issues or a lack of administrative support (Elipe et al., 2023; Reisner et al., 2020). These findings are concerning as teachers’ self-efficacy to successfully confront stigma-based harassment and the intolerance to harassment they observe from other teachers and staff are correlates of their later intervention (Collier et al., 2015; Zotti et al., 2019). In addition to teachers, school health professionals (e.g., nurses, school psychologists, and guidance counselors) may be well situated to handle student reports of stigma-based harassment or intervene when they witness harassment occur (Marshall et al., 2015). School psychologists, for example, may be able to provide more tailored weekly emotional support for SGDY who decide to report harassment; additionally, they may educate perpetrators on why this behavior is harmful and damaging not only to the student but also to the school community as a whole (Earnshaw et al., 2020).

Furthermore, how a teacher or staff member responds to SGDY’s reports of harassment could be shaped by state and school policy related to school-based harassment. Enumerated polices that explicitly ban bullying in school based on students’ real or perceived sexual and gender identities may facilitate an environment more welcoming to talking with teachers and staff about harassment (Real et al., 2024). For instance, not only might SGDY who are aware that they attend a school or live in a state with such policies feel more confident in seeking help from a teacher for harassment, but these teachers may also feel they have the resources and support from school administrations to respond to these reports effectively (Swanson & Gettinger, 2016). The implementation of professional development across school systems in the form of multicultural training related to LGBTQ issues and inclusive school policies, with clear support from administrators, is one step that may spill over to shape SGDY’s perceived effectiveness of teacher responses (Swanson & Gettinger, 2016). Future work should examine how professional development trainings and policy support shape teacher responses to SGDY reporting harassment and the potential far reaching impact on SGDY’s perceived reporting effectiveness and psychological distress.

The long-term benefit of multicultural professional development training, visible administrative support, and inclusive school polices could also translate to more active responses from school personnel to stigma-based harassment (Ioverno et al., 2022; Swanson & Gettinger, 2016). Ideally, the knowledge and support from these trainings and administrative leaders would foster an environment where most SGDY do not feel they have to actively seek help and take on the onus to manage their harassment, insofar teachers and staff can effectively intervene and offer support to SGD students when witnessing harassment occur. However, in scenarios where harassment occurs in settings where teachers or other staff members are not readily present, we hope that such training and leadership support will create more affirming school environments that facilitate more effective help-seeking processes among SGDY when or if they feel that reaching out to a teacher or staff member is necessary.

Limitations

The current findings should be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, the current study was cross-sectional, which limits our ability to draw temporal conclusions. Future work focused on SGDY-specific experiences should follow youth in schools over time and account for baseline levels of psychological distress to understand better how reporting harassment to teachers longitudinally contributes to psychological distress alongside peer harassment. Second, the study was comprised of a non-probability sample of SGDY, which may limit the generalizability of our findings to SGDY who had access to and were able to complete a time extensive health survey. Reviews of the literature have found non-probability samples of sexual minority adults to under-represent individuals with lower SES and who identify with an identity other than gay or lesbian (Salway et al., 2019); indeed, a large portion of our sample consisted of SGDY whose parents/caregivers were college graduates, which could have limited our ability to more precisely explore these associations. In addition, the study sample was primarily comprised of white SGDY and was limited in racial identity response options in ways that may have underrepresented certain groups of youth (e.g., Middle Eastern youth). Future work should aim to replicate these findings using more representative samples with greater SES and racial diversity. Third, it is unclear which form of stigma-based harassment SGDY in the current sample reported to their teachers. Future work should use more comprehensive measures that ask SGDY which form of harassment they discussed with a teacher or staff member about and why.

This study also only assessed the frequency at which SGDY reported experiencing each form of stigma-based harassment across the year. As such, it is unclear how the pattern of associations would replicate across different forms of harassment that vary in severity and intensity (e.g., physical forms). Future work should incorporate more comprehensive measures of harassment to explore whether the contribution of reporting harassment to teachers on psychological distress is contingent on the frequency, form, and intensity of harassment. Further, this study relied on self-report measures of harassment and reporting experiences. Although self-report measures are useful for capturing experiences with harassment (Juvonen et al., 2018), future work should explore whether these patterns of results replicate using peer-reported experiences of harassment and continue to survey teachers on how they handle reports of harassment from SGD students. Last, this study used several novel and single-item measures to assess SGDY’s reporting status, perceptions how well teachers responded to reports of harassment, and stress management abilities. Future measurement work should aim to develop more comprehensive assessments of student perceptions of teacher and staff member responses to reports of identity-based harassment, such as validation, emotional, and instrumental support (e.g., Boulton et al., 2013).

Conclusion

Sexual and gender diverse youth experience disproportionate amounts of discriminatory harassment in school (Fish et al., 2023; Myers et al., 2020). In moments where support from peers and adults is not readily available, some SGDY may be tasked to navigate a maze of perceived risks and benefits of seeking help from school personnel and think through whether to tell or not to tell at all. Using a national sample of SGDY who have experienced harassment targeting SGD identities in the past year, the current study shed light on SGDY’s reporting experiences. Overall, we found that, in general, SGDY who reported talking with teachers about their harassment tended to report lower levels of psychological distress; however, a more nuanced picture emerged when considering reporting harassment to teachers and stigma-based-harassment together, such that the association between gender-based harassment and psychological distress was stronger among SGDY who had talked with a teacher about harassment. Critically, SGDY who reported that their teachers effectively handled their reports indicated lower psychological distress.

These findings can be used to inform prevention programs on the need to bolster effective teacher responses to ensure that all students equally benefit from and feel comfortable reporting if they do desire to confide in a teacher. School psychologists would be well-positioned to lead these efforts by helping to design and implement professional development initiatives that equip school staff with the skills and resources to effectively respond to and meaningfully support SGDY experiencing harassment. Embedding these efforts within a broader inclusive school climate may further reinforce teachers’ capacity to foster a safe and supportive environment for SGDY.

Impact Statement:

Sexual and gender diverse youth reported less psychological distress when they had talked with a teacher or staff member about their experienced harassment and when they felt that school personnel responded to their reports effectively. How teachers and staff members respond to student reports of discriminatory harassment may carry important implications for victims’ psychological distress.