Issu psychotherapy wh lbian and gay men: A survey of psychologists

Contents:

• LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS NASS COUNTY, NY
• LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS CALIFORNIA
• APA’S GUIL FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY WH LBIAN, GAY AND BISEXUAL CLIENTS: THE FUNDAMENTALS FOR PRACTICE
• DR. EVELYN HOOKER: PSYCHOLOGIST AND GAY ALLY
• LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS TAMPA, FL
• LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS NEW YORK
• ISSU PSYCHOTHERAPY WH LBIAN AND GAY MEN: A SURVEY OF PSYCHOLOGISTS
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• ON THE MOSW METRO AND BEG GAY

LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS NASS COUNTY, NY

LGBTQ-affirmative therapists will be versed the negative effects of homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and heteronormativy (the assumptn that heterosexualy is “normal” and superr) and help clients navigate the challeng they prent—as well as relatnship problems, fay tensn, or other day-to-day ncerns for which a client might seek are the advantag of seeg an LGBTQ-iendly therapist? Although a person’s sexual or romantic orientatn or genr inty may not be a source of distrs, people who intify as lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, queer, qutng, asexual, or any other orientatn or genr inty may fd that the social stigma of livg as a mory is a source of strs or anxiety. Acrdg to a 2007 survey, stunts who intified as lbian, gay, bisexual, or transgenr were almost ten tim as likely to have experienced bullyg and victimizatn at school and more than twice as likely to have nsired suici as their heterosexual, non-transgenr classmat wh the prev year.

Early edns of the Diagnostic and Statistil Manual (DSM) intified homosexualy as a mental disorr, until clil rearch monstrated sexual or romantic attractn to someone of the same genr is a normal, healthy, posive form of human sexualy.

This article foc on the APA’s “Guil for psychotherapy wh lbian, gay and bisexual clients, ” begng wh a brief discsn of signifint effects of stigma and “mory strs" on LGB dividuals. The LGB Guil at a Glance The “Guil for psychotherapy wh lbian, gay and bisexual clients” (APA, 2000) were created to help psychologists intify the fundamental issu unique to the asssment and treatment of LGB dividuals, upl, and fai.

LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS CALIFORNIA

This page provis accurate rmatn for those who want to better unrstand sexual orientatn and the impact of prejudice and discrimatn on those who intify as lbian, gay, or bisexual. Public opn studi over the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s routely showed that, among large segments of the public, lbian, gay, and bisexual people were the target of strongly held negative attus.

The associatn of HIV/AIDS wh gay and bisexual men and the accurate belief that some people held that all gay and bisexual men were fected served to further stigmatize lbian, gay, and bisexual people. Dpe the persistence of stereotyp that portray lbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several s of rearch and clil experience have led all mastream medil and mental health anizatns this untry to nclu that the orientatns reprent normal forms of human experience.

Helpful rpons of a therapist treatg an dividual who is troubled about her or his same sex attractns clu helpg that person actively pe wh social prejudic agast homosexualy, succsfully rolve issu associated wh and rultg om ternal nflicts, and actively lead a happy and satisfyg life. The phrase “g out” is ed to refer to several aspects of lbian, gay, and bisexual persons’ experienc: self-awarens of same-sex attractns; the tellg of one or a few people about the attractns; wispread disclosure of same-sex attractns; and intifitn wh the lbian, gay, and bisexual muny.

APA’S GUIL FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY WH LBIAN, GAY AND BISEXUAL CLIENTS: THE FUNDAMENTALS FOR PRACTICE

Th, is not surprisg that lbians and gay men who feel they mt nceal their sexual orientatn report more equent mental health ncerns than do lbians and gay men who are more open; they may even have more physil health problems. Lbian, gay, and bisexual youth who do well spe strs—like all adolcents who do well spe strs—tend to be those who are socially petent, who have good problem-solvg skills, who have a sense of tonomy and purpose, and who look forward to the future. If they are a heterosexual relatnship, their experienc may be que siar to those of people who intify as heterosexual unls they choose to e out as bisexual; that se, they will likely face some of the same prejudice and discrimatn that lbian and gay dividuals enunter.

DR. EVELYN HOOKER: PSYCHOLOGIST AND GAY ALLY

Although parable data are not available, many sgle lbians and gay men are also parents, and many same-sex upl are part-time parents to children whose primary rince is elsewhere. For example, are the children of lbian or gay parents more vulnerable to mental breakdown, do they have more behavr problems, or are they ls psychologilly healthy than other children? The picture that emerg om this rearch shows that children of gay and lbian parents enjoy a social life that is typil of their age group terms of volvement wh peers, parents, fay members, and iends.

In summary, social science has shown that the ncerns often raised about children of lbian and gay parents, ncerns that are generally ground prejudice agast and stereotyp about gay people, are unfound. Overall, the rearch dit that the children of lbian and gay parents do not differ markedly om the children of heterosexual parents their velopment, adjtment, or overall well-beg. Lbian, gay, and bisexual people who want to help rce prejudice and discrimatn n be open about their sexual orientatn, even as they take necsary preutns to be as safe as possible.

When lbians, gay men, and bisexual people feel ee to make public their sexual orientatn, heterosexuals are given an opportuny to have personal ntact wh openly gay people and to perceive them as dividuals. Antigay attus are far ls mon among members of the populatn who have a close iend or fay member who is lbian or gay, pecially if the gay person has directly e out to the heterosexual person.

LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS TAMPA, FL

Kim Mills: June is LGBTQ Pri Month, marked by march and memoratns to celebrate LGBTQ culture and advote for the rights of lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer people the US and around the world. In addn to his work the history of psychology, he nducts experimental rearch areas cludg dory gaydar and how beliefs about the blogil basis of sexual orientatn fluence prejudice and discrimatn. Some of our listeners might not really be aware of how psychiatry was pelled to remove homosexualy om the Diagnostic and Statistil Manual of Mental Disorrs, which is pretty much the arber of what nstut a mental illns or a mental disorr among all behavral health practners.

He thought, "If I go outsi of the ci, and I go outsi of the ltle ty ltle secret gay enclav, then I'm gog to fd the people who are very different om each other, and 's gog to challenge this stereotype about what the signs of homosexualy are, " which were thgs like genr versn, or artistic terts for men, or thgs like that. The Rorschach tt was the target of a ntrolled experiment that Hooker did, as well, where she took gay and straight men, gave them all Rorschach tts, and found that there was no difference. I thk what Hooker did is, she took that sort of scientific lens that had always been sort of lookg at gay people and assumg there was a difference between gay and straight people, and g that difference whether was real or purported, to kd of build a fic mol and build a diagnosis, and build a mental health story.

And there you n see that some people who had been leadg the kd of gay affirmative iative the 1970s, particularly Steven Morand, whose now a unselg psychologist, wrg there and sayg, "This should be an issue. But I thk, once that happened, and once HIV/AIDS beme a way for psychologists and for psychology the Uned Stat, to have a more productive relatnship wh thgs like the NIMH, fundg streams, and so on, I thk took some ias that gay and lbian people were jt people, that were kd of a ltle b margal, they were que margal the 1970s. But that trajectory was already set tra by earlier stuff about sodomy laws, equal employment laws, parents rights to ctody of their children, and other thgs where APA had gone to urt about lbian and gay rights.

LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG THERAPISTS NEW YORK

I thk a pot here, and I thk this is kd of difficult for some people, maybe, to wrap your head around, is that y, there is this kd of genr-y kd of stereotypg around gay and lbian people that happens all the time.

That's why we kd of thought, "Actually, I thk stat needs to be thought about this equatn as well when we thk about what is the landspe of discrimatn that people might enunter if they are lbian and gay, " or even if they sound lbian or gay.

ISSU PSYCHOTHERAPY WH LBIAN AND GAY MEN: A SURVEY OF PSYCHOLOGISTS

Mills: I want to wrap up wh a qutn that tak back to your book for a moment, bee you end by wrg that 's important for all psychologists to have some knowledge of the recent history of LGBT psychology and that the field offers somethg of what you ll generalizable efulns beyond gay men and lbians to whom ially applied. In 1975, the Amerin Psychologil Associatn (APA) took a strong stance regardg bias toward lbians and gay men, rolvg that "homosexualy per se impli no impairment judgment, reliabily or general social and votnal abili" (see Appendix A for the full text of the rolutn).

Regnizg that practice do not spontaneoly or quickly follow policy chang, the Commtee on Lbian and Gay Concerns (CLGC), sponsored jotly by the Board of Social and Ethil Rponsibily Psychology (BSERP) and the Board of Profsnal Affairs (BPA), formed a task force 1984 to vtigate the range of bias that may occur psychotherapy wh lbians and gay men. The missn of CLGC's Task Force on Bias Psychotherapy wh Lbians and Gay Men was to scribe the range of problems that gay male and lbian clients n face psychotherapy and to provi an empiril basis for the velopment of guil and suggtns for practice.

Although the task force cid to approach issu of sexual orientatn as a generic tegory, there are doubtls many ways which the genr of a gay male or lbian client and the genr of the therapist may be to affect the psychotherapy experience. A full exploratn of this plex issue would require a reful parison of the therapy experienc of lbians vers gay men wh male vers female therapists, an unrtakg beyond the spe of this article. Rponnts were asked whether they knew of Aany specific experienc of lbian or gay clients psychotherapy om iends or lleagu, om their own profsnal practice, or om their own experienc as a client psychotherapy.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

The goal was to clu psychologists who, regardls of their own sexual orientatn, would be likely to have knowledge of the provisn of psychotheraptic servic to gay male and lbian clients, as well as gay male and lbian psychologists who may themselv have received psychotheraptic servic. To ensure a rponse rate aquate for analysis, we ed 1986 APA membership rolls to survey all members, fellows, and associat of Divisns 44 (Society for the Psychologil Study of Gay and Lbian Issu) and 35 (Psychology of Women), and a random sample of 4, 000 licensed members of APA (balanced by genr) who were not members of eher of those divisns. Nearly all of the psychotherapy provirs (99%), regardls of sexual orientatn, reported that they had seen at least one gay male or lbian client psychotherapy at some pot durg their reers.

Task force members nsolidated the rults om the four separate work groups and anized all materials to three broad tegori: strategi of terventn, issu of special relevance to lbian and gay male populatns, and issu about therapists' expertise and trag.

ON THE MOSW METRO AND BEG GAY

In some stanc, the biased and beneficial them reprent oppose sis of the same issueCfor example, ntrastg a therapist's lack of knowledge about social prejudice agast gay men and lbians wh a therapist's special sensivy to social prejudice. I have seen several gay patients and each se the person reported that even though their prev therapist said that he or she accepted their homosexualy; the therapist ntued to foc upon their beg gay as the problem rather than upon what the person sought help for such as relatnship problems, trouble handlg guilt about wh fay or work, general social anxiety, or other problems totally unrelated to beg gay.

A therapist disurag a client om havg or adoptg a lbian or gay orientatn, mak the renunciatn of one's homosexualy a ndn of treatment, or the absence of a requt by the client seeks to change the sexual orientatn of the client:. Upon disclosure of homosexualy, a therapist abptly transfers a client whout provisn of appropriate referrals to the client or assistance wh the emotnal difficulti associated wh the transfer:. A therapist lacks unrstandg of the nature of lbian and gay male inty velopment, for example by nsirg a gay male or lbian inty possible only for adults, by viewg lbian or gay male inty solely terms of sexual behavr, or by terpretg a client's gay male or lbian inty as a Aphase that will be outgrown:.

A therapist unrtimat the importance of timate relatnships for gay men and lbians, for example by failg to support the matenance of or enuragg dissolutn of a client's relatnship solely bee is a homosexual relatnship, or by failg to provi or remend upl or fay therapy when would be the most appropriate terventn:. A gay male uple seekg assistance wh hibed sexual sire on the part of one told the problem dited the one partner probably really wasn't gay and that the remend terventn was to break up their relatnship. A lbian uple, seekg relatnship therapy, was advised that such therapy was not applible to their "type of relatnship, " that should not be nsired a permanent relatnship, and that they might nsir gog to gay bars to meet other people like themselv.