Correlates of wanting to seek help for mental health and substance use concerns by sexual and gender minority young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: A machine learning analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the mental health and substance use challenges among many people who are Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and intersex (2SLGBTQI+). We aimed to identify the important correlates and their effects on the predicted likelihood of wa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLOS ONE Vol. 17; no. 11; p. e0277438
Main Authors: Kundu, Anasua, Fu, Rui, Grace, Daniel, Logie, Carmen H., Abramovich, Alex, Baskerville, Bruce, Yager, Christina, Schwartz, Robert, Mitsakakis, Nicholas, Planinac, Lynn, Chaiton, Michael
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States Public Library of Science (PLoS) 16.11.2022
Public Library of Science
Subjects:
Adults
Adverse childhood experiences
Biology and Life Sciences
Bisexual
Bisexuality
Children
Computer and Information Sciences
Coronaviruses
Correlation
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Cross-Sectional Studies
Delay
Drug use
Ethnicity
Female
Gays & lesbians
Gender
Health disparities
Health risks
Humans
Machine Learning
Medical personnel
Medical research
Medicine
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental depression
Mental disorders
Mental Health
Ontario
Pandemics
People and Places
Professionals
Q
Questionnaires
R
Research Article
Science
Sexual and Gender Minorities
Social Sciences
Sociodemographics
Statistical analysis
Stigma
Substance use
Substance-Related Disorders
Substance-Related Disorders - epidemiology
Suicidal behavior
Transgender persons
Two-Spirit
Underserved populations
Variables
Young Adult
Young adults
Ontario
Canada
United States > US
Quebec Canada
ISSN:1932-6203, 1932-6203
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the mental health and substance use challenges among many people who are Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and intersex (2SLGBTQI+). We aimed to identify the important correlates and their effects on the predicted likelihood of wanting to seek help among 2SLGBTQI+ young adults for mental health or substance use concerns during the pandemic. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2020–2021 among 2SLGBTQI+ young adults aged 16–29 living in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec). Among 1414 participants, 77% (n = 1089) wanted to seek help for their mental health or substance use concerns during the pandemic, out of these, 69.8% (n = 760) reported delay in accessing care. We built a random forest (RF) model to predict the status of wanting to seek help, which achieved moderately high performance with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.85. The top 10 correlates of wanting to seek help were worsening mental health, age, stigma and discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences. The interactions of adequate housing with certain sexual orientations, gender identities and mental health challenges were found to increase the likelihood of wanting to seek help. We built another RF model for predicting risk of delay in accessing care among participants who wanted to seek help (n = 1089). The model identified a similar set of top 10 correlates of delay in accessing care but lacked adequate performance (AUC 0.61). These findings can direct future research and targeted prevention measures to reduce health disparities for 2SLGBTQI+ young adults.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0277438