Psychological well-being, identity crisis and resilience of sexual minority students in a South African University

Abstract

Even though homosexuality exists, it is apparent that it has not yet been widely accepted especially within the African culture. Culture is viewed as a way of life and it consists of customs and rituals. In the African culture homosexuality is seen as non existent as it violates the gender roles. Culture consequently leads these homosexual students to end up hiding their sexual orientation from the larger community as they are afraid of being rejected and isolated. The psychological well-being of homosexual students within the university can be affected as they experience social isolation, rejection, prejudice, harassment. As a result, these students end up trying to become resilient by trying to master their environment and to cope with their stress or challenges. They end up hiding their sexual orientation from their counterparts. At this point homosexual students end up having multiple identities. Psychological well-being in this study is viewed as the absence of any mental disorder. The components that define psychological well-being are autonomy, self acceptance, environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life and the ability to establish positive relations with others. It occurs when a person is satisfied with his or her life, is free from depression and feels hopeful and good about him- or herself. The literature indicates that gay and lesbian students are afraid of becoming open about their sexual orientation as they fear harassment and violence. Resilience refers to an individual's ability to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may either result in the individual 'bouncing back' to a previous state of functioning or simply not showing negative effects. This study consequently was aimed at exploring the psychological well-being and resilience of sexual minority students in the University. The model of Cass identity formation was used as theoretical framework which has six stages. 1) identity confusion, (2) identity comparison, (3) identity tolerance, ( 4) identity acceptance, (5) identity pride and (6) identity synthesis. The theoretical perspectives used to explain and direct the focus of this study were Ryff's theory of psychological well-being, Shame resilience theory and Symbolic interaction theory. This study consequently was aimed at exploring the psychological well-being and resilience of sexual minority students in a South Africa University. The research was conducted with students from the North-West University (Mafikeng Campus) in the North-West Province, South Africa. The researcher used the snowball sampling technique to select the participants based on particular features or characteristics of individuals as observed by the researcher. Two focus group discussions were conducted and the data was analysed using narrative and thematic analysis in this study and the findings were integrated and presented as themes supported by theories. The principal outcome of this study is that the students foresee rejection and discrimination in their future as professionals due to their sexual orientation. The Resilience of sexual minority group in the North-West University is neither high nor low but significantly moderate .The participants have shown two indicators of resilience, namely, friends as a source of resilience and the sexual minority group as a source of resilience.