It occurs to us as we write this introduction that we have not yet acknowledged an important milestone for The Journal of Gay & Lesbian Health (JGLMH) this year. This is volume 20 of JGLMH, the official journal of the Association of LGBTQ Psychiatrists (AGLP). The journal was founded in 1988 as the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy by editor David Scasta and publisher Bill Cohen from Harrington Park Press. When asked for comment, Mr. Cohen had this to say about the early days of the journal:
“The fondest memories in dealing with the launch of the journal involve its first two editors:
| 1) | Dr. David Scasta as founding editor. His kindness, energies, and goodwill were invigorating. It is hard to imagine how the journal could have been launched without him. | ||||
| 2) | The iconic Dr. Jack Drescher. Many of his special issues ended up as terrific specialty books. Some were classics in the LGBT mental health literature, covering ground-breaking topics ranging from conversion therapy to prostate cancer in gay men to barebacking to crystal meth addiction.” | ||||
We are indeed fortunate that the journal was established so definitively under the direction of our founding editor and editor emeritus. We look forward to many more volumes and to the 30th anniversary of the journal's founding in a couple of years.
In this issue, we are pleased to bring you five original research studies on some compelling topics related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) mental health.
Tracey Peter, Catherine Taylor, and Christopher Campbell analyze findings from the First National Climate Survey of Homophobia and Transphobia in Canadian Schools. They situate this analysis in the context of previous research looking at the effects of school climate on suicidality in gender and sexual minority youth.
Continuing the discussion of rural issues for LGBTQ people that we started in Issue 19(4), we bring you Cathleen E. Willging and colleagues’ article describing their innovative program to coach LGBTQ peers in rural areas to be mental health advocates. Using data from semi-structured interviews of both the peers and the psychologist coaches, the program is evaluated using qualitative methods.
Brian A. Feinstein and colleagues analyzed data from Wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions to examine whether involvement in a romantic relationship could be protective against the mental health impact of minority stress. Interestingly, they found some support for this effect in bisexual individuals, but not in gay or lesbian individuals.
In their article, Adolph Joseph Delgado, Danielle Gordon, and Phillip Schnarrs explore the effects of discrimination on behaviors such as substance abuse and sexual risk-taking in a sample of sexual minority men in the U.S. military. This study has some interesting and sometimes counter-intuitive findings and will be of interest to those wondering how things are changing in the military after the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell.
In our last article of this issue, Helen M. Hendy, Lauren J. Joseph, and S. Hakan Can contribute a study that explores coping responses to sexual minority stress and identifies a clinically important finding: of the number of coping responses investigated, only the use of repressed anger affected the way minority stressors led to negative psychological outcomes such as poor self-esteem and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.
Going back to our opening remarks about the significance of hitting the Volume 20 milestone, we hope longtime readers of the JGLMH who have memories of the journal's early days will feel free to submit a Letter to the Editors with your anecdotes and thoughts. Please submit to [email protected]