SOCW628 Culturally Informed Behavioral HlthPrac with LGBTQ+ Communities
This course explores considerations for providing culturally informed behavioral health care to the LGBTQ+ community. Discussions will include the limitations of cisgender and heterosexual theories and clinical interventions discussed in prior courses. Students will learn engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation methods that are culturally sensitive and consider the impact of stigma, discrimination, homophobia and transphobia, and present-day social and political events affecting this community’s behavioral health and service needs. Students will also gain an understanding of the social worker’s clinical and advocacy roles considering the systemic barriers faced by this community and the client’s individual characteristics and preferences, spirituality, and cultural, family and community values and practices. Attention is given to the impacts of structural conditions, including violence, youth homelessness and trauma, exclusion from families and communities of origin, lack of access to gender affirming healthcare, and high rates of addiction, suicide, mental illness, and health inequities. Attention is also given to clinical care that is non-pathologizing and non-heteronormative.