Total Credits: 1.5 including 1.5 APA Credit, 1.5 California Board of Registered Nurses, 1.5 California CLE, 1.5 California Association of Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Counselors
This presentation will highlight research that suggests the importance of family affirmation in the health and mental health of gender expansive and LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. Mental health providers can play an important role in helping parents be able to be the informed, affirming and advocating caregivers that their gender expansive and LGBTQ+ youth need them to be. Clinical experience suggests that there are patterns in the way that both initially accepting, and initially non-accepting, families move to places of greater acceptance and affirmation of their gender expansive and LGBTQ+ children. The presentation will specifically explore the kinds of support caregivers need to be able to fully support youth in their care.
Objectives: After this training, participants will be able to:
1) Participants will list three ways that parental affirmation impacts the mental health and wellness outcomes of LGBTQ youth and young adults
2) Participants will analyze, and discuss somewhat predictable patterns in caregiver anxiety, guilt and grief related to a youth’s sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression
3) Participants will identify different types of emotional and practical support strategies both rejecting and affirming parents
| Hormones MFT Carlton Guidelines (138.5 KB) | Available after Purchase |
| Hormones FTM Carlton Guidelines (122.6 KB) | Available after Purchase |
| Hawaii SOGIE Resources (139.5 KB) | Available after Purchase |
Dr. Laura Anderson has been a licensed child and family psychologist for more than twenty years, and is lucky to have called Hawaii home for most of her career. Dr. Anderson’s areas of expertise include school consultation, assessment of children and adolescents, anxiety treatment, and working with foster and adoptive families.
Additionally, in the past decade Dr. Anderson has done a deep dive into specializing in the provision of services to gender expansive and LGBTQ+ kids, teens and their families. She is a member of the UCSF Mind-the-Gap Mental Health Consortium for mental health providers who are gender specialists. Dr. Anderson spent time as the co-founder of Parenting-in-the-Gap, a group under the umbrella of Mind-the-Gap that focuses on training therapists to work effectively with family members of gender expansive youth. For both personal and professional reasons, Dr. Anderson is passionate about supporting gender expansive and LGBTQ+ youth and their families.