LGBTQ+ People’s Experiences of Barriers and Welcoming Factors When Accessing and Attending Intervention for Psychological Trauma

Abstract

The current study investigated experiences of mental health services with members of the LGBTQ+ community who have experienced trauma. Using survey questions participants identified multiple barriers to accessing and receiving intervention for psychological trauma (e.g., lack of inclusive language in forms/publications, previous anti LGBTQ+ comments made by service providers). Participants also endorsed several provider behaviors that would make interventions more welcoming (e.g., post a bill of rights expressing commitment to nondiscriminatory care, ask clients their pronouns). Intervention strategies to improve LGBTQ+ people’s experiences of accessing mental health care for psychological trauma are discussed.

Keywords:

• Counseling
• intervention barriers
• LGBTQ+ counseling
• LGBTQ+ mental health
• trauma
• trauma therapy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The frequencies for ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation do not sum to the total sample size because the groups were not mutually exclusive.

2 Interested readers are invited to contact us concerning the frequency of the professional disciplines of these therapists, and of the settings in which therapy took place.

3 Generally, similar patterns were noted among the different LGBTQ+ subgroups. When different patterns were noted, additional figures are included. Due to space limitations, we did not include figures depicting the subgroup-based frequencies for all of the barriers, but interested readers are invited to contact us for that information.

4 Because participants were sometimes in more than one subgroup (e.g., one could identify as both a gay man and a trans man), groups were not statistically compared.

5 Generally speaking, similar patterns were noted among the different LGBTQ+ subgroups. Interested readers are invited to contact us for information depicting the subgroup-based frequencies.