How Can Mental Health Professionals Take An LGBTQ Affirming Stance?

Along with other survivor-based initiatives, such as Mad Pride and de-institutionalization, discussions on queer perspectives on mental health represent a watershed point in the development of the Psy sciences. It’s a chance to make atonement for wrongs done and start down the path of understanding how social injustice affects mental health, the realization that we are not isolated people untouched by larger societal systems.

Indians in Kolkata celebrate the Supreme Court decision to strike down a colonial-era ban on gay sex.

Classifying non-pathological experiences as pathological and prescribing remedies for them has stigmatised people. Since society considers cis heterosexual partnerships “normal,” mental health has labelled them. It treats LGBTQ+ persons like they have an illness and proposes “treatments” to make them “normal” cis heterosexuals. “Conversion therapies” have a violent and dismal history.

Due to the mental health system’s long history of pathologizing LGBT+ people, it’s likely that a member of this community will be “taken” by loved ones to a clinic or will opt to seek therapy there to cope with discrimination and hostility.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises same-sex partnerships, affects the Indian mental health system. Legal and social issues faced India’s LGBT community. After Section 377 was repealed, more mental health professionals contacted the LGBTQ+ community for resources. It gives me hope that modern practitioners want to learn from the past. This essay will offer some suggestions.

Mental health curricula and training are inadequate for helping the LGBTQ+ population. A practitioner who will ‘cure’ LGBT people is becoming common. Second, this acknowledgement will need addressing gender and sexuality indoctrination. We must continuously relearn what is “normal” in sexuality, gender, and romantic partnerships. Examining our own preconceptions reveals that societal conditioning has shaped our viewpoint. This task asked how we’d react to a non-binary or transgender person.

LGBT Community needs more affirmation

Since the majority society is ignorant of LGBTQ+ lifestyles and groups, practitioners must retrain social conceptions of “normal” Information must not promote damaging beliefs and stigmas. This information should come from those who have fought for acceptance because of who they are. Resource book on Queer Affirmative Counseling Practice can assist therapists and counsellors get started. It’s authored by LGBTQ mental health, gender, and sexuality experts. This book is the result of the pioneering Queer Affirmative Counseling Practice programme (QACP).

A queer-positive therapist recognises the impact of social unfairness and institutional oppression on patients’ emotional well-being. It’s absurd to believe that someone treated with disrespect and disgust will be mentally healthy. This affects mental health greatly. Mental health pathologizes LGBT identities and prejudice. Daily discrimination harms mental health.

LGBTQ affirming is also crucial because marginalised individuals need safety nets to survive. Queer persons may benefit from counselling or mental health treatments to cope with daily difficulties. They’re often shunned by their birth families because to their identities. Queers are rejected by their peers and forced to sleep on the streets. Mental health services can’t eliminate loss’s anguish, but they can help you heal.