Self–Esteem, Social Connectedness and Quality of Life Among the LGBTQI+ Community in South India

Abstract

LGBTQI+ is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. The initialism LGBTQI+ is intended to emphasize a diversity of sexuality and gender identity – based cultures. Self – esteem typically refers to how positively a person views themselves. This can reflect their self – image, accomplishments, and success. The concept of social connectedness emphasizes the importance of relations, respect and freedom from humiliation. Social connectedness is a sense of belonging to a group, family, or community. Quality of life is the degree to which an individual is healthy, comfortable, and able to participate in or enjoy life events. The main of this paper was to study the levels of self – esteem, social connectedness and quality of life among the LGBTQI+ community in South India and it’s comparison with the heterosexual population. A sample of 160 individuals for the study, it being equally divided among the LGBTQI+ community (N = 80, 20 lesbians, 20 gays, 20 trans persons and 20 bisexuals) and heterosexual population (N = 80, 40 males and 40 females). The results states that homosexual population is high on self – esteem and low on social connectedness and quality of life in comparison to homosexual population. It was alos found that the levels of the variables mentioned is equally divided among all the identities of the LGBTQI+ population, with no difference.