This full day workshop, presented by Arlene Lev, will assist clinicians in developing skills necessary for working with child and adolescent members of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) community who have been impacted by trauma, as well as their families. We will first discuss issues unique to these communities regarding identity development, coming out, and couple and family building. We will then contextualize this conversation by understanding discrimination and bias, and the psychological costs of being a sexual minority within an often homophobic and transphobic world.

We will examine the ways that LGBTQ are vulnerable to trauma in the same ways that other people are (car accidents, random violence), as well as bias and assaults (bias-related violence) directed at LGBTQ people, and the impact of child physical and sexual abuse. We will also examine the unique experiences of violence within same-sex relationships, and sexual assault targeted at LGBTQ people because of their identities.

Sexual minority status infers an experience of “othering” within social environments that is often mirrored when seeking support. We will examine the role of micro-aggressions as well as societal discrimination in the psychologies of LGBTQ and how this influences their reactions to violence, bias, and trauma. LGBTQ people are often pathologized in clinical relationships, and their traumatic experiences are minimized; they are sometimes blamed for the violence they have endured. This workshop will bring together the research on trauma and link that to the ongoing research on LGBTQ identity management, and family building.