Critical psychology perspectives on LGBTQ+ mental health: current issues and interventions

Sexual and gender minorities continue to face inequalities, discrimination and hostility, and in some parts of the world, significant threat. While in a country like the United Kingdom, many equalities for gay, lesbian and bisexual (LGB) individuals have been won (less so for, trans individuals), homonegativity and transnegativity remain significant issues. In other parts of the world, homosexuality is still considered a pathology and a crime, and LGBTQ+ individuals are actively persecuted. In the UK, research has shown that LGB individuals manifest greater prevalence of poor mental health, health risk behaviours and psychological distress, as compared to their heterosexual counterparts (Semlyen et al., 2016). Despite improvements in matters of equality and inclusion in the UK, and, seemingly, general societal acceptance, comparisons between epidemiological surveys from 2007 and 2014 indicate that the proportionately poorer mental health among lesbian, gay and bisexual people, compared to the heterosexual population, has not improved (Pitman et al., 2020). Such epidemiological data highlight the urgent need to address impoverished mental health experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals but do not in and of themselves provide evidence of causal pathways, made possible with longitudinal study designs. Moreover, it is important to understand how LGBTQ+ intersectionality impacts the determinants of poorer mental health to allow us to design suitable interventions that are accessible across a range of sexual and gender minority identities. Studies that look at the breadth of identities focusing on subgroups is much needed. Diversity within LGBTQ research is critical; even large-scale studies find reporting on LGBT diversity challenging (Russell et al., 2020; Semlyen, 2017) The collection of seven papers in this special issue, takes a closer examination of these issues across multiple identities. They explore issues for samples of transgender individuals (Tan et al.), queer and gender diverse young people (Cowie and Braun) queer and neurodiverse young people (Oswald et al), sexual minority adults (Lim et al., Marshall et al., and Vance et al.), and LGBTQ asylum seekers and refugees (Mulé). The collection of papers come from different English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States of America. While this represents a Western perspective, some of the papers focus on minority ethnic populations within the LGBTQ communities of the respective countries (Marshall et al., Vance et al.), and one paper (Mulé) includes participants of different nationalities. The papers adopt a broadly critical approach, utilising diverse methodologies (case study, survey studies, focus group and interview studies) across understanding experience, service access and service use. All of the papers use different ways of considering intersectionality, either through comparing different groups statistically or making comparisons along demographic factors, or examining converging and/or diverging narratives. In the first paper, Cowie and Braun interview queer and gender diverse adolescents in Aotearoa New Zealand, exploring how they make sense of their own psychological distress, and what they feel would be useful in supporting their wellbeing. Participants reported on being aware of cisgenderism and experiencing it as a threat to mental health. Although many participants seemed to position themselves as ‘outside’ bad experiences, many nevertheless describe experiences of bullying and prejudice, and mental distress. Furthermore, many described their experiences being dismissed and invalidated by others, and against this experience, many wished to emphasise the realness of their distress by likening it to a physical illness, thus finding validation in a biomedical model and diagnosis. PSYCHOLOGY & SEXUALITY 2022, VOL. 13, NO. 5, 1105–1108 https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2021.2019961