52-2 LGBT Issues and Counseling Competency: The Impact of Training on Enhancing Knowledge, Awareness and Skills

Hsiao-Pei Chang Yi-Jung Lee
National Taichung University of Education
    Research showed that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals have a higher prevalence rate of mental disorders than heterosexuals. Mental health is related to different factors, such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Stressors that are unique to LGBT individuals, such as homophobia, stigma, prejudice, discrimination and hate crimes, create a hostile environment for LGBT individuals. According to literature, a stressful social environment is related to higher risk of mental disorders, substance abuse, and suicidal behaviors. For LGBT adolescents, it is rather common to experience bully in school, which has a negative impact on their mental health. Moreover, their functioning level related to life and school usually decline, such as lower academic achievement, dropping out of school, etc. Research indicated that being bully during adolescence is related to depression, suicide ideation, lower life satisfaction, and lower self-esteem in adult life. Being rejected by others is also related to fear of establishing close relationships, lack of positive outlook of life, difficulty of expressing emotions, etc. For LGBT adults, they often need to deal with differential treatment in the work environment. For example, transgender individuals’ income is usually lower than non-transgender individuals. Those unique stressors related to LGBT individuals indicate that they are in great need of professional help. However, it is rather difficult for LGBT individuals to find satisfying mental health services, which reflects the lack of appropriate and effective training in the counseling graduate programs. This study aimed at designing and developing a training program for counseling graduate students to enhance their multicultural counseling competency to serve LGBT clients, and exploring their experience in the training program.
    Participants were recruited from counseling-related graduate programs. Participants included 40 graduate students from counseling-related programs. The training program was designed based on the framework of multicultural counseling competence (i.e., knowledge, attitude, and skills), cognitive developmental theory, relevant literature, and discussions with professionals of LGBT issues. Participants received 40 hours of training related to LGBT issues which included six themes. The training themes were self-identification development process, interpersonal and romantic relationships, “coming out of the closet” and family relations, career development process, stigma, and systematic collaboration. Each theme was taught by a different lecturer, who was selected based on their expertise. This was to make sure that the training program covered three areas of multicultural counseling competence (i.e., knowledge, attitude, and skills). The impact of the training program was evaluated by focus group interviews and the content analysis.
    The results showed that this training program had positive impact on participants’ competence to serve LGBT clients. The results indicated changes in three areas: knowledge, attitudes and skills. Participants reported more in-depth knowledge related to LGBT issues. They stated that they became more aware of their own explicit and implicit biases toward LGBT issues. They started to show changes of attitude, such as becoming more open-minded, flexible, and courageous in terms of advocating for LGBT individuals. Participants indicated enhancement of their skills, such as active listing, empathy, information providing, systematic collaboration, utilization of different media in counseling, etc. The results also showed that multiple formats of discussions, perspective-taking, experiential activities and learning LGBT individuals’ personal experience were the key factors related to effective learning.
    The results have import implications for training and promoting LGBT counseling competence. It is suggested that deconstructing cultural encapsulation, contextual factors, and reflective learning are important elements. Students need to be aware of their own stereotypes of LGBT individuals and issues in order to deconstruct their habitual way of thinking. The training also needs to take students’ background and learning level into consideration. It seems to be more effective to utilize reflective learning method to help students develop and enhance their multicultural counseling competence. Those three elements are essential for educators to design and advocate for LGBT counseling competence training program in the future.
  

Keywords
Counseling competency, LGBT issues, training program.

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