Tag Archives: BPS

Curing the gays

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Yesterday, I was invited to meet with Norman Lamb the Minister for Care and Support and the heads (or their representatives) of most of the major psy/therapy organisations (BACP, UKCP, BPS, National Counselling Society, British Psychoanalytic Council, Relate, BABCP, Assoc of Christian Counsellors, Chair of GLAAD representing the Royal College of GP’s) PACE and Stonewall. The topic of this ’round table’ was Conversion Therapy which the Minister told us he was very concerned about and wanted to establish what was happening and what the government might do about it.

Professor Michael King was there representing the Royal College of Psychiatrists and both he and I were invited to make presentations – him on the evidence of efficacy and harm and me, on the training needs for therapists and what the professional bodies should be doing. I’d been waiting for an opportunity like this for my entire career!

David Pink from UKCP gave some background to the issue as UKCP have been taking the lead on this for a while now and recently produced a booklet commissioned by the Government for the NHS Choices website.  Pink Therapy had a hand in this and it seems an important step at the Government making it clear that Conversion Therapy has no place in ethical health care for LGB people.

After Mike King gave some background on the history of conversion therapy and the lack of evidence for its benefit and plenty of evidence for it’s harm, I had around 20 minutes to present my own thoughts.

This is a slightly tidied up version of what I said:

Dept of Health Round Table on Conversion Therapy

Training & Policy

Whilst I’m concerned about religiously motivated Conversion Therapy and have been professionally active on this issue for over two decades, I’m much more concerned with Professor King’s data about 1:6 mainstream therapists of your organisations agreeing to contracts to reduce SSA or cure people. Most of these people are not overtly religiously motivated and so might not feel your Conversion Therapy policy statements apply to them.

These were well meaning mainstream and secular therapists who were poorly trained and inadequately prepared to know how to respond to a highly distressed client. Training in understanding what is different about working with gender or sexual minorities is either absent or patchy in most British therapy training courses and so therapists don’t know how to respond and often have little cultural competency in understanding the social contexts in which their clients live. Noble humanistic concepts about the clients right to self determination are in conflict with what might be a lack of choice over the gender of their sexual partners. The people presenting for ‘gay cure’ are generally likely to be those who have a fixed and enduring sexual identity (Kinsey 6’s) and whereas sexuality can be quite plastic for many people and there are plenty of examples of situational homosexuality amongst heterosexuals in single sex environments and sexual fluidity over a lifespan for many LGB and T people, the people seeking ‘cure’ are unlikely to be those people who feel unable to change.

In some contexts (lesbian and gay Muslim especially) lesbians and gay men may be facing honour killings from family members or alienation from their community and families. They maybe literally pleading for their lives. 

I’m also interested to know how those organisations which have Christian Counsellors or Pastoral Counsellors like Assoc Christian Counselling and BACP’s Association for Pastoral and Spiritual Care Counselling will monitor whether conversion therapy is being undertaken organisations?  Changing policy and forbidding something doesn’t make it go away. 

I’m interested to hear what other colleagues are doing to ensure their Policy Statements are translated into action and how they propose to train their members in ensuring they can respond appropriately to requests for change.

However, it goes wider than this in delivering culturally safe and appropriate mental health services. An example is that whilst we now have full equality in Gay Marriage, we should bear in mind that research shows that between 50-80% gay male couples are are not sexually exclusive. So whilst Relate has become less heteronormative over the years, it is still virtually impossible for a gay couple to get help in opening up their sexual relationship, when the training of the therapists in Relate has been about helping couples maintain sexual fidelity and keeping families together. 

Research is showing that Bisexuals get offered conversion therapy from mainstream counselling organisations too! Some therapists feel they should just help the bisexual pick one identity and either be heterosexual or gay. (Ref: Bisexuality Report and Richards and Barker, 2013)

My recommendations

  1. Accrediting a course, should mean the course gets audited for what they are teaching about working with gender and sexual diversity clients. I’m interested in therapists being culturally safe to offer therapy to sex minority communities. So that LGBT people are afforded dignity to live within their own values and norms. Such training in understanding developmental theory, life stages and relationship models etc should be integrated and run throughout whole curriculum and not be an optional add on for a single workshop. The BPS Guidelines for working therapeutically with gender and sexual minority clients are most helpful and I’d like courses seeking accreditation to be asked to embed these guidelines in their training of therapists so that throughout the curricula therapists are learning how to work with diversity.
  2. Post Qualified counsellors faced with requests for change need CPD to help them better handle these issues. A big stick or forbidding conversion  therapy is not helpful.  You have a duty of care to your members to support them in know how best to effectively respond to genuine distress and requests for ‘cure’.
  3. Therapists and supervisors need training in how to work with the issues. Our own workshops for supervisors were frequently cancelled due to low take up, it seems supervisors (who may well have been trained at a time when homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder) feel they are above or beyond the need for training in how to supervise therapy with LGBT clients.
  4. Specifically with regard to Requests for ‘Cure’, I recommend a training pack be produced – with video, experiential exercises and some theoretical material and resources which addresses how to work with these issues. We should then offer to train counsellor trainers in how to use the pack so that they can then deliver training to their students.  It would be good if the Dept of Health could help us produce this material – making a video with a Muslim actor playing a gay client who is conflict with his cultural and faith beliefs and sexual orientation.

You will see I’ve used the concept of Cultural Safety.  This arose in Nurse Education in New Zealand and here’s a short explanation:
Cultural safety relates to the experience of the recipient of nursing service and extends beyond cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity. It provides consumers of nursing services with the power to comment on practices and contribute to the achievement of positive health outcomes and experiences. It also enables them to participate in changing any negatively perceived or experienced service. The Council’s definition of cultural safety is:

The effective nursing practice of a person or family from another culture, and is determined by that person or family. Culture includes, but is not restricted to, age or generation; gender; sexual orientation; occupation and socioeconomic status; ethnic origin or migrant experience; religious or spiritual belief; and disability

The nurse delivering the nursing service will have undertaken a process of reflection on his or her own cultural identity and will recognise the impact that his or her personal culture has on his or her professional practice. Unsafe cultural practice comprises any action which diminishes, demeans or disempowers the cultural identity and well being of an individual. 

http://nursingcouncil.org.nz/content/download/721/2871/file/Guidelines%20for%20cultural%20safety,%20the%20Treaty%20of%20Waitangi,%20and%20Maori%20health%20in%20nursing%20education%20and%20practice.pdf [emphasis added]

After the meeting, I had warm and encouraging approaches from the National Counselling Society and the British Psychoanalytic Council who want us to advise them on what they can be doing. Also within hours the Chief Exec of Relate emailed me asking me to meet with their Head of Training.  Interestingly, the representative from BACP remained silent throughout the meeting and afterwards.  I hope I shouldn’t be reading too much into this.

There are plans for a follow up meeting and maybe a Memorandum of Understanding which we will hopefully agree.

This is the first time I’ve seen these professional associations coming together on an issue. They are essentially rivals and many competing for members. It was good to see them in agreement about Conversion Therapy and open to hearing my proposals.

Dominic Davies
Director

Communicating with gay clients with mental health needs: how psychologists’ personal characteristics can get in the way

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At a time when Lesbian and Gay (LG) equality rights are still being debated by the United Kingdom (UK) Parliament and by several religious organisations, worldwide attitudes towards same-sex relationships remain controversial and ambivalent (Pew Research Centre, 2013). Previous research has identified the existence of such ambivalent attitudes amongst the general population (Herek, 2009; Herek, Gillis & Cogan, 2009), in particular when unconscious (implicit) attitudes are measured and do not always match people’s self-reported (explicit) attitudes (Banse, Seise & Zerbes, 2001; Nosek & Banaji, 2009; Ranganath & Nosek, 2007; Steffens & Jonas, 2010). Equally, attitudes in psychologists seem to follow similar trends (Boysen & Vogel, 2008; Boysen, 2009) where explicit attitudes tend to be positive while implicit attitudes tend to be ambivalent or negative. Such discrepancy between explicit and implicit attitudes can cause internal conflicts in people between their thoughts about, and their behaviour towards, LG people. This can make people come across as ambivalent, distant, and negative (Gawronski & Strack, 2004; 2012) when interacting with LG people. 

Research has found evidence that psychologists and psychologists-in-training can show such ambivalence to LG people too (Finkel et al., 2003; O’Brien, 2003; Scher, 2009), including anxiety and avoidance (Gelso et al., 1995), and emotional and social distance (Barrett & McWhirter, 2002; Jones, 2000). Equally, vulnerable clients belonging to minority groups may often be at the centre of unintended discrimination, through ambivalent behaviours, when professionals’ attitudes about clients’ identity are negative or biased. Studies also revealed that psychologists would show less concern for gay clients when their attitudes towards LG people were more negative (Clarke, 2010), consider LG clients riskier and more likely ‘to harm other people’ (Bowers et al., 2005), propose more controlling interventions with gay clients (O’Brien, 2003), be less willing to work with gay clients in therapy (Barrett et al., 2002), regard LG identity as more pathological, and support the use of therapy to change a client’s sexual orientation (Kilgore et al., 2005). 

These findings are particularly relevant for clinical psychologists who increasingly may have to see in clinic LG people with psychological and social needs, and to offer them support through direct and indirect clinical work, consultancy and training, supervision and research, and academia-related activities (British Psychological Society, 2006; 2012). Psychologists’ attitudes about clients are then particularly relevant to clinical communication. This is due to the recognition of the potential bio-psycho-social impact that discrimination and prejudice can have on people belonging to minority groups (Meyer, 2003; Davies, 2012). Nonetheless, communication and attitudinal research is a recent emerging phenomena among healthcare professionals (Steffens, 2005; Steffens & Jonas, 2010), remains scarce and is further needed at the centre of clinical psychology practice.

The current research investigated communication patterns on a sample of UK clinical psychologists-in-training toward simulated ‘gay clients’ (professional actors), and how participants’ demographic characteristics and attitudes towards LG people may be related to their behaviour in session with a ‘gay client’ either with depression or with anxiety. The study also looked at changes in clinical communication over time, so each 10-minute ‘session’ was video-recorded to be analysed with two communication measures. ‘Gay clients’ also provided their satisfaction score at the end of each session for each psychologist. Results suggested that the current sample of psychologists-in-training show discrepancy between positive self-reported (explicit) attitudes and slightly negative and ambiguous unconscious (implicit) attitudes towards LG people. The attitudes of the current sample were equivalent to those found in earlier studies (i.e. Boysen et al., 2008; Banse et al., 2001) thus showing a prevalence of unconscious social prejudice and distance towards sexual diversity. These attitudes did not change after six months of clinical training and placement experience. 

Furthermore, clinical communication scores revealed that participants interacted professionally with ‘gay clients’ but showed less empathy and interest in client’s concerns and worries. ‘Clients’ also felt overall dissatisfied with their sessions and did not feel a connection with their ‘psychologist’. In particular, psychologists who had more avoidant characteristics had more difficulty in communicating with ‘clients with depression’, did not explore clients’ feelings as often, and gave ‘clients’ less opportunities to speak about their worries. Whenever clients gave hints to the psychologist that they wanted to talk about their concerns, most of the time these were not noted or followed-up by the psychologist.  ‘Clients with depression’ felt less satisfied with their session than ‘clients with anxiety’ and findings were similar after six months of clinical training and placement. However, after six months of training, psychologists’ communication scores improved slightly and ‘clients with depression’ felt slightly more satisfied with their session.

These findings are important since previous research has found that practitioners often struggle more when working with clients with depression (e.g. Gonzalez et al., 2013; Annen et al., 2012; Lyons & Janca, 2009). These clients are often perceived as unmotivated and disengaged, and consultations are more difficult to conduct. However, most of the time clients with depression are unsure if they can trust their therapists with their problems and just want to be asked the right questions. When applying such results to LG clients, a study by Newman and colleagues (2010) uncovered that gay men with depression often withheld information about their worries and concerns until they feel that their therapists are trustworthy, ethical, encouraging, knowledgeable, supportive and, most of all, are open and clear. These are important areas to highlight, due to the dual stigmatisation that gay men may face when also diagnosed with a mental illness. 

Quality of life, therapeutic outcome and client satisfaction can be greatly improved when there is tailored client participation and decision-making and good clinician communication skills (Vogel, Leonhart & Helmes, 2009). So there is an urgency to ensure that psychologists are trained to provide therapy in a safe and affirmative environment with the right communication skills, even if at first they may feel deskilled to working with LG people. There is also a need for psychologists to revisit their assumptions of sexual orientation through specific sexual diversity training, to prevent cultural and personal bias from transpiring to the therapeutic relationship. In particular, future research could explore the impact of such training on attitudes and clinical communication with gay clients with depression when comparing to heterosexual clients with depression to evaluate if there is any difference in the interaction.

 References

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Banse, R., Seise, J., & Zerbes, N. (2001). Implicit attitudes toward homosexuality: reliability, validity and controllability of the IAT. Zeitschrift fur Experimentelle Psychologie, 48(2): 145-160.

Barrett, K. A., & McWhirter, B. T. (2002). Counselor trainees’ perceptions of clients based on client sexual orientation. Counselor Education & Supervision, 41: 219-232.

Bowers, A. M. V., & Bieschke, K. J. (2005). Psychologists’ clinical evaluations and attitudes: an examination of the influence of gender and sexual orientation. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 36(1): 97-103.

Boysen, G. A. (2009). A Review of Experimental Studies of Explicit and Implicit Bias Among Counselors. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 37: 240-249.

Boysen, G. A. & Vogel, D. L. (2008). The relationship between level of training, implicit bias, and multicultural competency among counselor trainees. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 2(2): 103-110.

British Psychological Society (BPS) (2006). Core competencies – clinical psychology – a guide. Leicester, UK: BPS.

British Psychological Society (BPS) (2012). Guidelines and literature review for psychologists working therapeutically with sexual and gender minority clients. Leicester: British Psychological Society.

Clarke, C. P. (2010). Exploring the relationship between heterosexual therapists’ attitudes toward gay men, their self-reported multicultural counseling competency, and their initial clinical judgments. Dissertation Abstracts International, 70, 12-B, PsycINFO, EBSCOhost [accessed 25 September 2012]

Davies, D. (2012). Sexual orientation. In C. Feltham & I. Horton (eds) The Sage handbook of counselling and psychotherapy, 3rd edition, pp. 44-48. London: Sage Publications.

Finkel, M. J., Storaasli, R. D., Bandele, A., & Schaefer, V. (2003). Diversity training in graduate school: an exploratory evaluation of the Safe Zone Project. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 34(5): 555-561.

Gawronski, B., & Strack, F. (2004). On the propositional nature of cognitive consistency: Dissonance changes explicit but not implicit attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 535–542.

Gawronski, B., & Strack, F. (Eds.). (2012). Cognitive consistency: A fundamental principle in social cognition. New York: Guilford Press

Gelso, C. J., Fassinger, R. E., Gomez, M. J., & Latts, M. G. (1995). Countertransference reactions to lesbian clients: the role of homophobia, counsellor gender, and countertransference management. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 42: 356-364.

Gonzalez, A. V., Siegel, J. T., Alvaro, E. M., & O’Brien, E. K. (2013). The Effect of depression on physician–patient communication among Hispanic end-stage renal disease patients. Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives, Feb 14. DOI:10.1080/10810730.2012.727962

Herek, G. M. (2009). Understanding sexual stigma and sexual prejudice in the United States: a conceptual framework. In D. Hope (Ed.), Contemporary perspectives on lesbian, gay and bisexual identities: the 54th Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (pp.65-111). New York: Springer.

Herek, G. M., Gillis, J. R., & Cogan, J. C. (2009). Internalized stigma among sexual minority adults: Insights from a social psychological perspective. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 56: 32-43.

Jones, L. S. (2000). Attitudes of psychologists and psychologists-in-training to homosexual women and men: an Australian study. Journal of Homosexuality, 39(2): 113-132.

Kilgore, H., Sideman, L., Amin, K., Baca, L., & Bohanske, B. (2005). Psychologists’ attitudes and Therapeutic approaches toward gay, lesbian, and bisexual issues continue to improve: an Update. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 42(3): 395-400.

Lyons, Z., & Janca, A. (2009). Diagnosis of male depression – does general practitioner gender play a part?. Australian Family Physician, 38(9), 743-746. 

Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129: 674-697.

Newman, C., Kippax, S., Mao, L., Saltman, D., & Kidd, M. (2010). Roles ascribed to general practitioners by gay men with depression. Australian Family Physician, 39(9), 667-671. 

Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Implicit attitudes. In P. Wilken, T. Bayne, & A. Cleeremans (Eds.), Oxford Companion to Consciousness (pp. 84-85). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Ranganath, K. A., & Nosek, B. A. (2007). Implicit attitudes. In R. Baumeister & K. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Social Psychology (pp.464-466). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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Steffens, M. (2005). Implicit and explicit attitudes towards lesbians and gay men. Journal of Homosexuality, 49(2): 39-66.

Steffens, M. C., & Jonas, K. J. (2010). Implicit attitude measures. Journal of Psychology, 218(1): 1-3.

Vogel, B., Leonhart, R., & Helmes, A. (2009). Communication matters: The impact of communication and participation in decision making on breast cancer patients’ depression and quality of life. Patient Education & Counseling, 77(3), 391-397. doi:10.1016/j.pec.2009.09.005

Miguel Montenegro
Trainee Clinical Psychologist, University of Liverpool

September 2013