This was a excellent event and well worth giving up a weekend for. Here's what I came away:
The mental health and well being of those identified as LGBT is not good - we are not a happy bunch! Nothing very surprising really, I suppose. Prof Michael King's keynote lecture he reviewed world-wide reseach that suggests we suffer depression, anxiety and alcohol and drug misuse, and attempt suicide more often than hetrosexual people - between 2 and 4 times more, in fact!
We do go for couselling, it seems, but do we get the best services possible? Here there may be cause for concern. The services we go to may not be as sensitive to our needs as we might expect. The main reason being that, dispite the official line that sexual orientation is not a pathology, a sickness, our problems are still being seen as resulting from this and/ or our life style and not from having to live in what is still a homophobic society where, as Venessa Baird summerises in her book called Diveristy, nothing very profound has changed, despite changes to the law in the UK in recent decades.
At this point I would like to say that as a result of having attended this event, I have come to agree with Dominic Davies, director of Pink Therapy, who has stated that just being gay isn't enough of a qualification in itself to offer what has been termed gay affirmative therapy. The issues are just too complex and confusing. It seems that being well infromed is more important than just being LGBT. In fact, even though for a few people it is very important to have a LGBT identified and 'out' therapist, reseach has suggested that the sexual orientation of the therapist is not always that important. What is important is that they are familiar with the issues a client brings ,and have thought deeply about their assumptions and limitations, as people. Here the buzz words I came away with were, homonegativity, hetrosexism, hetronormativity and hypervigilance. (This last one bothers me somewhat, as, coming from an approach that avoids psychopathology, it implies that the vigilance is hyper or over and not necessary, where as it very often is necessary and we do it all the time not even realising we are doing it! How exhausting!)
We do not get the best from the people we turn to for help, whether they be psychiatrists, clinical psychologists or psychotherapist or counsellors. This is because training institions do not, as yet, include specific training on LGBT issues and queer theory. My own training at the New School of Psychothearpy had a module on Human Sexuality. I had been looking forward to it but was very dissappointed and it very much let down an otherwise excellent course somewhat. The module itself wasn't particually well thought out or challenging - it only touched on homosexuality with little or nothing on more complex issues of transgender or queer theroy etc. This is surprising given that Foucault himself is often quoted by current queer theorists and academics. What was more disturbing was the lack of interest and level engaged of my peers who revealed themselves as prudish and conservative. In supervision the sexuality of our clients was very often presented with by embarrassment and juvenile giggling!
In case, you've not noticed, I've 'come out' here as a gaytherapst. I had before with my website www.gaytherapist.co.uk but lost courage when I created this new site. I usually come out when clients come out to me, something I'm still reflecting on in supervision. Not to do so still feels wrong. I am an activist after all.
In my next blog I will continue with this subject and deal with current, sensible thinking around reasons for diversity and the appalling issue of curing sexual orientation.