Family Acceptance Project Launches National, Integrated Online Resource to Help LGBTQ Youth and Families Find Services, Increase Support for LGBTQ Youth During Mental Health Emergency
First of Its Kind Online Resource for LGBTQ Youth and Families Launches During Holiday Season – Often A Difficult Time for LGBTQ Youth – to Help Decrease Isolation, Family Rejection & Mental Health Risks & Increase Well-Being
San Francisco, CA – As the Covid-19 pandemic stretches into another year, the toll on children, youth and families has escalated. Last month, leading national child and adolescent medical groups designated a national emergency for children’s and adolescent’s mental health in response to soaring rates of mental health challenges that disproportionately impact communities of color and call for trauma-informed services to reduce risk and support family resilience.
The impact on LGBTQ young people has been significant. Research over a period of years has documented high levels of risk for suicide, substance abuse, depression and homelessness for LGBTQ youth, related to social stigma. Before the pandemic, LGBTQ youth were 4-6 times more likely to attempt suicide compared with non-LGBTQ peers. During the pandemic, stress, attempted suicide and emergency department visits have ballooned for children and youth, overall. Of particular concern, lack of services for families with LGBTQ children has been an ongoing problem and is a major gap in prevention and care for diverse LGBTQ children, youth and families, nationwide. This has become more urgent given the early ages when children and adolescents self-identify as LGBTQ today – increasingly in childhood and pre-teen years – as a result of widespread access to information and positive images of LGBTQ lives, inconceivable for earlier generations of LGBTQ people who came out as adults and often led closeted lives.
Said Dr. Christine Moutier, Chief Medical Officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: “The Family Acceptance Project’s work provides critical information to help parents and caregivers learn to support their LGBTQ children and to help youth and families find access to urgently needed resources. Their research has shown that when adults learn and demonstrate specific supportive behaviors in the home and community, LGBTQ youth not only feel more connected, but their health outcomes, including suicide risk, can be improved. A critical component of FAP’s work is providing evidence-based guidance to decrease family rejection and increase acceptance in ways that are culturally and linguistically relevant.”
Dr. Caitlin Ryan, Director of the Family Acceptance Project, noted: “Although awareness has increased significantly of the risks that LGBTQ youth experience, there is still widespread lack of understanding of the essential role of family support in protecting against mental health risks and increasing well-being for LGBTQ youth. Our social media and online resources will help educate parents and caregivers on the compelling impact of family rejecting and accepting behaviors on their child’s risk for suicide, drug use and other serious health risks. Simple changes in how families respond to their LGBTQ children can make a powerful difference in preventing risk and building healthy futures. As families gather for the holidays this year, we are releasing this new resource to help decrease isolation and increase support for both LGBTQ youth and their families.”
Historically, services for LGBTQ youth have been provided to LGBTQ youth alone, like adults, or through peer support since parents and families were seen as rejecting and incapable of learning to support their LGBTQ children. The perception that parents and caregivers are unable to learn to support their LGBTQ children – particularly in families that are culturally and religiously conservative – has impeded the development of family-based services and care to help diverse families learn to support their LGBTQ children. Twenty years ago when the Family Acceptance Project (FAP) initiated the first research on LGBTQ youth and families, when conflict erupted, LGBTQ youth were routinely removed from their homes and placed in custodial care since providers did not believe that it was possible to increase family support. Moreover, providers saw their role as helping to protect LGBTQ young people from their families, not to promote family connectedness.
This perception began to change as the Family Acceptance Project (FAP) started to publish the first research on LGBTQ youth and families and showed that families play a critical role in contributing to health risks, including suicidal behaviors, and helping to protect against risk and promote well-being. FAP’s research identified more than 100 specific family rejecting and accepting behaviors that increase risk for suicide, depression, drug use, HIV and other health risks and promote well-being. These behaviors provide a foundation for FAPs behavior-based family support model that helps diverse families learn to support their LGBTQ children in the context of their families, cultures and faith traditions – even when they believe that being gay or transgender is wrong.
Recognizing the growing crisis in adolescent mental health for youth of color and LGBTQ youth, the Upswing Fund for Adolescent Mental Health, a collaborative fund powered by Panorama, was launched in 2020 to provide resources for frontline services and to support organizations that work to transform mental health systems of care. Supported by this fund, the Family Acceptance Project with collaborative partners and cultural leaders are launching for the first time a new national online resource that provides access to accurate information and affirmative services to increase family and community support for LGBTQ children and youth to help decrease mental health risks and to promote well-being. This new website – which is the first targeted resource for LGBTQ youth and families – includes a national searchable map of community support services that affirm LGBTQ young people and help to increase family support, along with multilingual and multicultural evidence-based resources to increase family support for LGBTQ children and youth. Resources accessible through the new online site include: support services for LGBTQ youth; peer support for parents, caregivers and families; LGBTQ community centers; LGBTQ health clinics; gender clinics; school supports; affirming faith-based organizations and resources; and a national list of culture-based resources for ethnically and racially diverse LGBTQ communities.
To carry out this work, FAP is collaborating with the Institute for Innovation & Implementation, a research-based organization at the University of Maryland School of Social Work that focuses on transforming systems to address the needs of children, youth and families, with a specific focus on LGBTQ and gender diverse children and youth. Since 2005, the Institute has been building the capacity of the nation’s health and mental health systems to care for vulnerable children and youth, most recently with national education and training centers to help decrease risk and increase well-being for LGBTQ children and adolescents.
Cultural leaders and community members from diverse backgrounds have helped FAP to develop culturally grounded educational resources for families, youth, providers and religious leaders that show how specific family rejecting and accepting behaviors affect LGBTQ children’s and adolescent’s risk and well-being in 11 languages with a specific version for American Indian families and communities. This new web resource will provide a series of webinars and family guidance materials that range from integrating FAP’s family support model into Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to guidance from Asian parents on supporting their transgender children. The website will be updated over time as new resources are added.
This initiative includes an on-going social media component, disseminating graphics that illustrate how family accepting and rejecting behaviors impact health and well-being for LGBTQ children and youth, featuring the work of multidisciplinary artist, Sam Kirk. Founder of Provoke Culture, Kirk is a young queer artist whose murals and visual narratives explore culture, diversity and identity and vitalize communities across the U.S. Family accepting and rejecting behaviors studied in FAP’s research, have been transformed by Kirk’s art into social media memes that are being deployed across platforms to connect LGBTQ youth, parents, caregivers and others with critical family support messages and resources through the website to help decrease isolation, increase connectedness and provide access to affirming services.
About the Family Acceptance Project
The Family Acceptance Project is a research, intervention, education and policy initiative, affiliated with San Francisco State University, that is designed to: 1) prevent risk, including suicide, substance abuse and homelessness, and promote well-being for LGBTQ children and adolescents in the context of their families, cultures and faith communities; and 2) implement and disseminate the first research-based, family model of wellness, prevention, and care to build healthy futures for LGBTQ children and youth.
Media Contact:
Cathy Renna
(917) 757-6123
cathy@targetcue.com
For information visit the Institute for Innovation & Implementation