Diversity: Beyond Cultural Competence in Psychotherapy with the LGBTQI+ Population

Course fulfills some states’ diversity requirements. Check with your licensing board.

Our understanding and treatment of human diversity as mental health professionals continues to evolve, often towards a greater acceptance and valuing of individualized human experience and variance. In spite of clinicians’ constantly evolving compassion and inclusion towards previously stigmatized groups, generational discrimination and intolerance may have adversely affected those who have experienced this stigma impacting the lives of ensuing generations. In order to best address this impact, we must continue to improve our understanding of the experiences of the LGBTQI+ population and modify and improve our psychotherapy toolkit for optimal results in the treatment room.

This is an intermediate course for those who seek to achieve cultural competence specific to the LGBTQI+ population. The course is comprised of seven articles and an audiotaped interview (transcript provided) with Dr. Davina Kotulski in which she addresses the complicated relationship between the medical establishment, psychiatry, and the understanding of those in the mental health field of same-sex attraction, gender orientation and its treatment, and maltreatment of LGBTQI+ people. The articles review the components of general cultural competence models currently in place, the impacts of cultural competence on healthcare, the incidence of mood, stress and substance related disorders experienced by the LGBTQI+ population, and the application of cultural competence in supervision practices. Additional resources and references are provided for further study, but they are not part of the course.