Sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth experience the same types of traumas as their non-SGM peers, including child maltreatment, domestic and community violence, accidents, traumatic death, and separation. SGM youth are also at elevated risk for stressors common among minorities. Furthermore, these youth experience distinct ongoing stress related to discriminatory societal, medical, educational, housing, employment and/or legal attitudes, norms and/or practices, among others.

The studies presented in the current dissertation cover three well known risk factors for mental health problems: genetic vulnerability (the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism), childhood trauma, and cognitive biases. We took both a disorder-specific approach (depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): DSM-5; APA, 2013) and a more transdiagnostic approach to assess these risk factors for mental health problems.

Objective: Prolonged grief disorder wasnewly included in ICD-11 and resembles persistent complex bereavement disorder, newly included in DSM-5.

Background: Population-attributable risk (PAR) may help estimate the potential contribution of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to serious clinical presentations of depression, characterized by suicidality, previous psychiatric admissions, and episode recurrence. Objective: To determine the PAR of ACEs for serious clinical presentations of depression (high suicide risk, previous psychiatric admissions, and recurrent depression) in outpatients with ICD-10 clinical depression.