2015 Association for Women in Psychology Conference

The process of restorative justice involves healing and creating conditions for optimal well-being. Merely the presence or absence of mental illness does not accurately gauge the presence or absence of optimal health or well-being, as mental health and mental illness are posited to be along two separate continua (Keyes, 2005; Bhullar et al., 2013). While research on well-being in a psychological context has become an increasingly visible topic in the last 30 years (and has been particularly burgeoning in the positive psychology literature since 2000); Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), human diversity has received little attention. Cross-cultural differences between countries accounts for most of the studies incorporating diversity. However, well-being and resiliency in an intersectional identity context has been the focus of very few studies. Therefore, this research study examines the construct of well-being utilizing a recently developed instrument, the Multidimensional Well-being Assessment (MWA; Harrell, 2013), in an ethnically diverse lesbian sample. The preliminary study sample consists of a minimum of 32 self-identified multicultural (primarily identifying as non-Caucasian) lesbian or queer females over 18 years of age. Data analysis will include descriptive and correlational analyses to examine at five dimensions of well-being (psychological, physical, relational, collective, and transcendent) within a sample of adult lesbians of color (LOC). Descriptive statistics will present levels of well-being for the total sample, as well as across demographic variables. Correlational analysis will be performed to identify significant correlates of well-being among lesbians of color in this sample. Extant literature and resilient and risk factors for this population will be discussed. Implications for the facilitation of optimal well-being among lesbians of color will also be presented.