An Ecological Framework for Transgender Inclusive Family Therapy

Disparities in Childhood Abuse Between Transgender and Cisgender Adolescents

“…42,43 Providers should carefully tailor their interventions to ensure their care is validating of TGAs' gender identity while limiting rejection and fostering acceptance by family members. 44,45 TGAs are more likely to report childhood abuse than heterosexual CGAs, and risk for psychological abuse is highest among TGAs assigned female at birth. Clinicians should be aware that higher levels of abuse could contribute to disproportionate mental health problems among TGAs, and future research should examine how childhood abuse contributes to higher levels of mental health problems among TGAs over time.…”

Deconstructing cissexism: The journey of becoming an affirmative family therapist for transgender and nonbinary clients

“…Although it is important to acknowledge that many members of transgender and nonbinary communities do not seek to engage in medical transitions (Austin et al, 2017), for those who do, therapists are frequently the gatekeepers to medical services (Coolhart et al, 2013; Lev, 2004). Therefore, an essential personal action that family therapists can commit to is learning about the existing diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM; i.e., gender dysphoria) and the new diagnosis that will be introduced when version 11 of the International Classification of Diseases (i.e., gender incongruence) is released in 2022 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Edwards et al, 2019; Rodríguez et al, 2018; World Health Organization, 2019). In addition to learning about these diagnostic criteria, it would also be important to become familiar with the current World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care that serve as the global practice standards for therapists and physicians who work with transgender and nonbinary people (Coleman et al, 2012).…”

“…Going further, acting as an ally to transgender and nonbinary communities involves engaging in political actions, such as attending rallies and events to support and promote civil rights for transgender and nonbinary people as well as voting for candidates who support the rights of those with marginalized gender identities (Grzanka & Miles, 2016). Moreover, family therapists need to be aware of the current laws and proposed legislation that support and restrict the civil rights of transgender and nonbinary individuals within local and national governments (Edwards et al, 2019). For example, as of 2020, there are currently 26 U.S. states in which transgender and nonbinary individuals can be denied employment or housing based solely on their gender identity (Movement Advancement Project, 2020).…”

Resilience Factors and Suicide Risk for a Sample of Transgender Clients

“…Collectively, this research provides an initial understanding of the pathway of increased suicide risk by showing how community-based stressors can indirectly increase suicide risk for transgender people by first increasing individual-based stressors. With this said, it is important to note that previous authors have highlighted the bidirectional nature of influence for individual-and community-based stressors (Edwards, Goodwin, & Neumann, 2019), though the current research on indirect stressor effects (Breslow et al, 2015;Testa et al, 2017;Trujillo et al, 2017) has only focused on understanding one direction of influence-namely the impact of community-based factors on individual-based factors.…”

“…Although it is generally considered good clinical practice to extensively assess clients' strengths and resources, our findings suggest that assessing for relational resources is of paramount importance for transgender clients presenting with high risk for suicide. For couples and families with transgender members who are at risk for suicide, assessment of relational support networks should be expansive -including the collective relational resources (Edwards, Goodwin, & Neumann, 2019). Essentially, the assessment phase should focus on determining what relationships the client system has in order to involve this support network in the therapeutic process.…”