Positive psychology and LGBTQIA+ well-being

Abstract

Many cultures have been making increasingly more effort to be accommodating towards the LGBTQIA+ (i.e., Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual) community. These efforts have become especially noticeable in the past 10 years, with a notable example of this being the federal legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. As a result, psychological research has become more interested in the welfare of the LGBTQIA+ community in recent times. Research has found that on average, people who identify as LGBTQIA+ are more likely to have a mental illness than those who do not identify as LGBTQIA+ (Peter, 2018). This is due to a variety of factors, with marginalization and minority stress thought to be predictors of mental illness in LGBTQIA+ individuals (Hatzenbuhler et. al, 2018). In recent years, many scientific fields have made efforts to be more accommodating towards the LGBTQIA+ community. This includes psychology, which, for example, used to classify homosexuality as a mental illness, but was removed from the DSM-5 in 2013 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Vider and Byers (2015) provide a summary of psychology’s history with the LGBTQIA+ community: in the 1960s and 1970s, forced conversion therapy was strongly advocated by several prominent psychiatrists, despite pushback from LGBTQIA+ rights organizations and other members of the psychiatric community. While homosexuality was removed from the DSM-2 in 1973, it was replaced by “sexual orientation disturbance, and then “ego-dystonic homosexuality,” which referred to sexual orientation that caused a person distress, in the DSM-3 in 1980. This diagnosis was subsequently removed in 1987, but currently exists in the DSM-5 as “ego-dystonic sexual orientation,” in addition to the diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” which has received criticism from LGBTQIA+ advocates. Additionally, while the American Psychiatric Association acknowledged the harm that conversion therapy can cause towards a patient, the practice continues to this day, albeit with greatly diminished popularity. Currently, there is an effort being made to treat LGBTQIA+ patients in a way that does not pathologize the patient, but these efforts are fairly new in practice. As a result, there have been increased calls for the field of psychology to focus on positive psychology as a tool for providing affirming care for patients who are LGBTQIA+. Due to this movement’s relative freshness, literature on the effects of approaches rooted in positive psychology on patients from the LGBTQIA+ community is scarce (Westcott, et. al., 2022). This thesis aims to provide comprehensive literature review on the subject, as well as suggest future directions of research. (from Introduction).