As employers work to build more equitable workplaces, their mental health benefits may be unintentionally delivering inequitable
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"There are significant health disparities for LGBTQ folks, and sadly those disparities still exist today in a paradoxical fashion," says Keren Lehavot, senior clinical training lead of culturally responsive care at Lyra Health. "Even as there's more social acceptance of this community, we're still seeing those disparities come to play."
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LGBTQ people often report
"When I first started doing this work we didn't really know why our LGBTQ people were showing these elevated rates," Lehavot says. "It really did take empirical data over the last 10 years or so to show very clearly that it's the association with minority stress and rethinking about how we tailor the kind of interventions companies have in place."
Lehavot recently spoke to EBN about the realities facing LGBTQ employees and why employers need to go the extra mile to ensure their
How has the current political climate played into the need for better and more comprehensive support for queer employees?
In my more than 12 years of being very active in this space, the last year has been like nothing I've ever seen before in terms of the onslaught of legislation, the anti-trans bills in particular. If you're an LGBTQ individual who's living in one of the states where you're affected by this, it has a huge impact on your mental health, the care that you can receive and how safe you might feel. It can be dangerous not knowing what the people around you think about your identity.
But the layer above that is, every member of the community is impacted by this. It's like the air we breathe. We can't just say, "Oh, this is Florida and I'm in Washington State, and so I can just turn my blinders on." In psychology we call this the vicarious victimization, where you're impacted by things that you've observed happening to people in your community, even if it's not kind of directly in your neighborhood.
What are some actionable ways that employers can go about supporting LGBTQ mental health in a real way?
Integrate culturally responsive care into the mental health benefits that you provide your employees to make sure that you have a mental health benefit that you can be confident in, and that your employees know how to access. There's also the matter of setting the tone of the culture so people know that your workplace is a safe, affirming environment and that their identity is not something to be shameful about. Make sure there are visible, designated safe spaces where queer employees can acknowledge hard moments when they happen — or even joyous occasions like Pride Month.
If someone shows or shares with you about their LGBTQ experiences, avoid making assumptions about their identity, consider your own personal biases and privileges and show that you're an ally. Communicate that this is a safe environment where you want to hear about people and people's different families and their struggles, and that you're open to that in your work team or workgroup. Every person has a role to play in making the environment as affirming as we would like it to be, not just kind of the people at the top.
As a mental health professional, how can culturally competent care positively impact a queer person's mental health?
At Lyra we think a lot about both cultural competence and cultural humility — two different elements that are both really important in the work that our providers do. When it comes to cultural competence, we're thinking about things like: Does someone have the training and the education and experience to treat clients from particular communities or groups? Have they learned about the history and some of the minority stressors and the important terminology and issues that come up in the LGBTQ community? Have you taken the approved trainings certified by the American Psychological Association or different boards? At Lyra we offer training on what every therapist should know when they work with a transgender client and what the key considerations when working with LGBTQ people of color are, so that everyone is thinking about intersectional identities in therapy because. Every human being has multiple identities, not just ones related to sexual orientation and gender identity.
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When it comes to cultural humility, that is knowing that you can never know everything. Even though I have studied LGBTQ health and consider myself a member of the community, I don't know everything. When we come in with cultural humility, we're really coming in knowing that our client is the expert on their own lives. We are humble learners who are there to really understand what it is like to walk in their shoes, without burdening them with teaching us about their culture.
How can ignoring the specific mental health needs of LGBTQ individuals be potentially harmful to the health and productivity of a business?
There's a big human cost, and that is the deterioration of mental health and morale. If you go to work and you're not supported as your whole entire self, people can become disengaged. They can feel less connected to the work that they're doing and how they're showing up. It's really hard to compartmentalize your mental health and your symptoms so that they only show up in one place.
As for how it's hurting your company, even the people who are just observing can be affected. For example, if someone happens to be on a team with someone who is suffering, there's a trickle-down effect that can happen. More and more of your employees might begin to wonder that if it's not a safe space for their friends or their colleagues, is it a safe space for them? And they may decide this might not be the kind of place that they want to be affiliated with.
