COVID-19, Work-Related Quality of Life, and Psychosocial Risks through the Lens of Sexual Orientation

• Autor(a) principal: Mendes, Cindy Sousa
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/11903
• topic: Covid-19 Pandemic; Fear and Negative Impact of Covid-19; Psychosocial Impact and Risks; Sexual Minorities; Sexual Orientation; Work-Related Quality of Life; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Psicologia

Literature often demonstrates disparities and inequalities between sexual orientations at the psychosocial level (Barrientos et al., 2010). This aspect comes from the fact that most socio-political contexts are governed by a mentality based on the domain of heteronormativity and heterosexism, which influences an environment of stigma, discrimination, and disadvantage towards sexual minorities (Weber et al., 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic required adaptations related to global measures to contain the virus, and inevitably the changes and adjustments made had implications for the daily life of the general population (Labrague & Santos, 2020). As a moment of exceptional vulnerability, the pandemic may have had a stronger impact on social groups that already had disadvantages and disparities (Schieman et al., 2020). The objective of this Dissertation was to evaluate and understanding the impacts and psychosocial risks that the COVID-19 pandemic had on sexual minorities that the present work was developed, which was include two scientific studies. The first study has a quantitative methodology and sought to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Work-Related Quality of Life (WRQoL) through sexual orientation. The second study used a qualitative methodology and sought to identify the psychosocial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Both studies had a sample of Portuguese language expression (Portugal and Brazil). The results obtained revealed a disadvantage of sexual minorities in relation to WRQoL during the pandemic, presenting more work stress, and lower levels of general well-being, career satisfaction and overall WRQoL. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic had psychosocial impacts on gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, namely in terms of mental health, isolation, relationships, work, education, finance, changes, coping and LGBTQI topics. These results agree with the literature, as there are disparities between sexual orientations, with more accentuated psychosocial impacts on sexual minorities during the pandemic. The conclusions of these studies seek to highlight social groups that are more vulnerable during the pandemic, to promote social and community policies to change mentality and that value the integration and equality of minority social group.