The Role of Social Support in Caring for LGBTQIA+ Youth

In any mental health treatment, patient social support can be an important component for maintaining treatment goals over time. This becomes especially important when patients are dealing with outside factors like bullying or victimization, such as LGBTQIA+ youth. Jody M. Russon, PhD, assistant professor at Virginia Tech, describes the ostracization that LGBTQIA+ youth may be facing and how clinicians can work with caregivers to provide support and combat any outside issues.

Dr Russon's Psych Congress 2022 session "Working With Suicidal Clients From the LGBTQIA+ Community: Recommendations for Treatment” was created in partnership with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention as part of the Suicide Prevention 360 initiative and aimed to help clinicians better understand how to navigate treating suicidal clients in the LGBTQIA+ community.

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For more information on the Suicide Prevention 360 initiative that aims to develop and deliver critical educational resources for mental health clinicians and other medical professionals aimed at preventing suicides, visit the landing page.

Jody Russon, PhD, is an assistant professor of human development and family science at Virginia Tech. She joined the Department of Human Development and Family Science after completing a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship in family intervention science in Philadelphia. She has focused her career on adaptation, implementation, and dissemination science in family psychotherapy. Her research is dedicated to vulnerable youth, particularly LGBTQ+ adolescents and young adults struggling with suicide, depression, trauma, and disordered eating.

Her teaching and supervisory experience is focused on applied skills for family therapy researchers and practitioners. Russon is a certified trainer and supervisor in one of the only empirically supported youth suicide treatment models, attachment-based family therapy. She is also a person-of-the-therapist (POTT) instructor and clinical supervisor.

Read the Transcript:

Psych Congress Network: What role does social support play in caring for suicidal LGBTQIA+ clients, and how can providers be mindful of that in their practice?

Dr Jody Russon: The role of social support for LGBTQIA+ youth is profound. We realize that the impact of distal stressors such as victimization and discrimination can be buffered; folks can resist the internalization of those stressors if they have supportive networks. And this can include friends and peers, but for our young people in particular, caregiver support, research shows, goes a long way. Those in our lives who are there to help keep us safe and protect us when we have them in our lives, it makes all the difference.

And so a lot of the kids I work with tell me, "The bullying may not have gotten better. It's still a problem. My teachers don't always understand where I am, but I can go home to mom, dad, grandma, gay mom, gay dad, and they provide me with a refuge. They provide me with the support I need so I can go out and tackle this a bit better."

At the same token, we need to help our caregivers work on becoming advocates for their youth. Now, I work with caregivers from rejecting to completely affirming. There's a continuum there, and people change over time. But what I am always hoping for is what Caitlin Ryan talks about, which is unpacking the rejecting behavior and targeting the behavior versus the ideology. So can I make my caregivers have more accepting behaviors, less rejecting behaviors, so they can advocate for their kid, even if they're still struggling with their kid's identity and how that is making sense for them?