Beyond Assumptions: Dr. Zachary Soulliard on LGBTQ+ Research, Body Image, and Eating Disorders
By Pranay Doppalapudi
What can psychology miss when it relies on familiar assumptions to explain complex human experiences?
For Dr. Zachary Soulliard, that question reaches into the relationship between identity, body image, and eating disorders. His research examines how people can internalize stressors such as weight discrimination and anti-LGBTQ+ stigma, shaping how they understand themselves and their bodies. By studying those pathways, he hopes to contribute to psychological research and LGBTQ-affirmative mental health care.
Today, Soulliard is a licensed psychologist and assistant professor at Miami University in Ohio, where he supervises clinical psychology doctoral students and directs the Body Image and Stigma Among Queer Populations Lab, known as the BISQue Lab. The lab pursues two central goals: the first is identifying ways to reduce body image concerns and disordered eating among LGBTQ+ people. The second is helping mental health providers adopt evidence-based, LGBTQ-affirmative treatments. Soulliard maintains a small private practice that primarily serves LGBTQ+ clients and people with body image or eating disorder concerns.
Soulliard’s focus on LGBTQ+ populations is also personal. As a queer man, he was struck by the lack of queer and transgender representation in the psychological research he encountered as an undergraduate. Later, during his doctoral training and postdoctoral fellowship, he connected this focus with his longstanding interest in body image and eating disorders. That intersection now anchors his work in an area that has long been understudied in psychology.
Finding His Way to Research
Like many, Soulliard’s path into psychology began with an AP Psychology course in high school. Fascinated by nearly every topic he encountered, he majored in psychology as an undergraduate and found that he was mainly drawn to teaching and clinical mental health. From there, he spent three years as a residential counselor and pursued a master’s degree in applied psychological research while working full-time. Close guidance from his research mentor showed him how research could help answer difficult questions about human behavior and well-being. The program, he says, “opened my eyes to how research can answer lots of questions that we think about a lot and kind of want to investigate, but don’t always know how to answer.” With his interests in clinical work and research beginning to come together, he went on to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology.
Where Therapy and Research Meet
For Soulliard, clinical practice and psychological research form a continuous cycle. What he observes in his clients informs his research in the lab, while evidence from that research helps shape how he approaches his clients in therapy. “So many of my research questions and the research that my lab is pursuing are very much informed by what I’m seeing in the therapy room,” he says.
Soulliard draws on therapies supported by research while recognizing that no single approach will work for every client. Working as both a researcher and clinician allows Soulliard to connect scientific evidence with the needs he encounters in practice, keeping his research questions grounded in the experiences of the people he serves.
When Evidence Complicates the Story
One of Soulliard’s recent findings surprised him. In a study being prepared for journal submission, he and his collaborators followed a population-based sample of sexual minority men and women in Sweden across three years. They examined two possible pathways to disordered eating: LGBTQ-related minority stress and weight stigma. The study looked at how experiences such as discrimination could contribute to internalized homophobia, biphobia, or weight bias, and how those internalized processes were associated with disordered eating.
The study found a difference between the two pathways. The weight stigma path was significant in predicting disordered eating over time among both the men and women in the study. LGBTQ-related discrimination and the associated internalized stigma did not. “It was only the weight stigma pathway,” Soulliard says. The result surprised him because previous studies conducted at a single point in time have found a relationship between LGBTQ-related stigma and disordered eating. That difference highlights how a relationship observed at a single point in time may not predict how outcomes develop over time, reinforcing for Soulliard the importance of using both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies.
Soulliard approaches his research with the understanding that complex human experiences rarely have a single cause. To reflect that complexity, he tests multiple theories at once rather than treating any one theory as a complete explanation. In a previous study published in Clinical Psychological Science, he tested minority stress theory alongside intraminority gay community stress theory. Intraminority gay community stress theory examines pressures that can arise within gay communities, such as competition and concerns about social status. In two samples of gay and bisexual men, these pressures predicted body dissatisfaction even after the researchers accounted for minority stress.
The result did not cause him to discard minority stress theory. Instead, it encouraged him to consider which other perspectives researchers might need to include. The finding prompted him to reflect: “How much do I really need to expand my theoretical paradigms to make sure that I’m conducting what is the most comprehensive research in my area as possible?”
Soulliard has also expanded the methods he uses to study these questions. His training was primarily in quantitative research, but he became involved in qualitative research during his postdoctoral fellowship. His lab is now moving toward more mixed-methods research, bringing numerical findings together with participants’ descriptions of their experiences to examine where those forms of evidence converge or differ.
By combining theories, research methods, and different forms of evidence, Soulliard hopes to better represent the complexity of human experience without reducing it to a single explanation.
Changing the Frame of LGBTQ+ Mental Health
Statistics can show that a mental health disparity exists without explaining where it comes from. When LGBTQ+ people experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicidality, or eating disorders, Soulliard believes their identities are sometimes treated as the explanation. This overlooks the conditions that produce those disparities.
Discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes can place pressure on LGBTQ+ people through both individual interactions and larger social structures. When those external pressures are ignored, LGBTQ+ identity itself can appear to be the problem.
“It has nothing to do with your identity, and who you are that’s at fault for why you’re seeing these mental health disparities,” Soulliard says. “It’s because of all the stigma-related factors that are happening to you.”
Correcting that misunderstanding matters, but Soulliard doesn't want risk and suffering to become the entire story either. Another common misconception is the idea that LGBTQ+ mental health research must focus only on negative outcomes. That narrow focus can leave out the strengths within LGBTQ+ communities. Soulliard points to a colleague’s research on queer and trans joy and how those experiences may protect against mental health concerns. Studying those strengths does not ignore discrimination; instead, it helps researchers understand the experience better.
Soulliard sees a similar blind spot in body image research. Body dissatisfaction is important to study, but people can also develop appreciation for their bodies. “The reality is that many people come to a place where they have a strong appreciation for their bodies,” he says. Some can “transcend beyond” the belief that their bodies must match a particular ideal.
Research on positive body image looks at how people value their bodies for how they function and what they allow them to do. Soulliard believes research should make room for those experiences alongside the challenges it already studies.
Making Time for the Work
The range of Soulliard’s roles also creates one of his biggest challenges: keeping multiple responsibilities moving at once. He teaches two undergraduate courses, mentors three PhD students and undergraduate honors students, and oversees research projects at stages ranging from ethical review and data analysis to writing and revising manuscripts.
To manage that workload, he plans his days deliberately. Alongside classes and meetings, he blocks off time for specific tasks, such as writing a manuscript introduction or running an analysis. “Everything is very chunked and is very intentionally planned,” he says. Rather than deciding what to work on whenever he finds free time, he gives each responsibility a specific place in his schedule.
Creating the Opportunities He Did Not Have
When Soulliard considers the most rewarding parts of his career, he gives two answers. One comes from his clinical work. The other comes from helping students pursue questions that were largely absent from his own education.
As a therapist, he has worked with LGBTQ+ clients across the United States and, during his postdoctoral training, with clients outside the country. He describes psychotherapy as one of the most honorable professions because clients place enormous trust in the person listening.
“You are hearing some of the most vulnerable and maybe painful things from people that they have not shared with anyone else,” he says. He is especially grateful to the LGBTQ+ clients who have trusted him with those experiences.
In his research career, that same sense of responsibility appears through mentorship. Soulliard works with both graduate and undergraduate students, many of whom are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Watching them research LGBTQ+ topics has been especially meaningful because he did not have the same opportunities as an undergraduate and had only limited access to them in graduate school.
Soulliard encourages students to consider research opportunities as early as the college search. At open houses, prospective students can ask faculty members, graduate students, or experienced undergraduates what research involvement looks like. Once in college, they can explore faculty research and contact professors or labs whose work interests them. Students may need time to adjust to college, but they should not assume they must wait several years to get involved.
“It is never too early, in my opinion, to start seeking that psychological research experience,” Soulliard says.
Those early research experiences can shape more than a student’s career. They can help psychology ask better questions, challenge familiar assumptions, and understand people within the full context of their lives.
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