Why Bisexual Adults Report Higher Rates of Mental Distress

The first step in fixing these disparities is understanding why they occur, experts said.

Bisexual people experience discrimination from both in and beyond the queer community — creating what the psychologist Ethan Mereish called “a double closet.” This can discourage bisexual people from coming out, in part because they may worry they won’t find a welcoming community.

A study from 2019 suggested that a major form of discrimination against bisexual people is “identity invalidation” — or the idea that your sexuality is not valid, or is ignored. The study found that much of this discrimination often comes from gay and lesbian people, followed by family members and straight people, and that it can directly affect bisexual people’s mental health, including contributing to depression, stress and exacerbated or triggered anxiety.

If you are bisexual — and especially if you are bisexual and in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender — your sexual identity may not be obvious to the outside world, Dr. Mereish said.

“There’s this stress of having to decide, is this interaction worth me coming out?” Dr. Mereish said. It can be “a psychologically taxing process.”