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Gear Gods – PANGAEA Kill It In This Exclusive Drum Playthrough of “AOKIGAHARA” Pangaea drummer Michael DeMarco drops the fire in this exclusive playthrough.

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E/Quality Care Conference Promotes Improved Mental Health Services For LGBTQ Community

Chris Nufer, a therapist in New York City, discovers that providing quality mental health care starts with developing cultural competency and learning to ask the right questions.

Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to attend the E/Quality Care Conference at the Pennsylvania Hotel in Manhattan. The all-day event, which was in its third year, is held to educate mental health providers about policy updates and care strategies for the LGBTQ community. The workshops provided terrific insights into the unique mental health problems that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population brings to treatment.

A key part of the discussion for me was how to build a therapeutic alliance with older individuals whose experience with the mental health system has generally bred nothing but mistrust and fear.

It was pointed out that a lot of older members of the community still remember that up until 1973 "homosexuality" was classified as mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. Others were deeply wounded by the intense homophobia that accompanied the AIDS epidemic in the seventies and eighties. Today, many still face blatant institutional disregard for their chosen or sexual preference or gender identity when they seek medical care or community services.  There are still practitioners that promote the discredited “reparative” therapies. The DSM still pathologizes gender-identity issues. Though it is changing, there are still many culturally insensitive social workers, psychologists and medical doctors who feel entitled to embrace homophobic beliefs on religious grounds. 

Delivering quality community mental health care under these circumstances is difficult. The presenters pointed out that the LGBT population has higher rates of disability and experience two times the average rate of depression. Research has now shown that coming out is good for your health if you have a good support system in place. The reasons for this are many. There is the emotional cost of hiding, the psychic stress of feeling isolated and rejected, the trauma of systemic discrimination, or the very real threat of violence and exposure on a daily basis.

The attendees learned that there are three important steps in improving the quality of mental health care for this population. First, mental health providers need to increase their cultural competency around LGBTQ issues including the presence of trauma or abuse in daily life.  Second, they need to be able to ask better questions during the intake and assessment process. This includes having a clearer understanding of how to approach unique relationship and identification issues sensitively. And finally, we need to understand that sexual orientation and gender identity play a key role in a person’s biopsychosocial make-up and best practices dictate that both should be validated. Sexuality is as important as religion, race or ethnicity for other minorities and can’t be disregarded. The consensus at the conference was mental health providers who avoid discussing these issues with their clients are doing them a grave disservice.

To make a difference the level of mental health care to the LGBTQ population, we need to address community-specific issues such as identity fragmentation; provide clients with the tools to cope with intolerance, stress, family or work issues or the trauma of multiple oppressions; and provide support to deal with HIV, substance abuse and other physical health issues.

The Rainbow Heights Club and the other sponsors should be commended for offering this event free-of-charge. Thanks go out as well to the speakers and panelists such as Suzy Ridholz of S.A.G.E and Barbara Warren of Beth Israel Medical Center for donating their time and expertise. If the mission of this conference was to offer non-LGBT providers of mental health services the tools and skills necessary to work effectively with LGBT mental health consumers, then from my perspective it was a huge success.

Here is a link to the conference website and many of the resources provided to attendees: http://www.equalitycare.org                              

                                                                                           -Chris Nufer