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Liberty University *
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502
Subject
Health Science
Date
Feb 20, 2024
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docx
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2
Uploaded by jrjohnson9
Feb 8, 2024Feb 8 at 8:51pm
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The first thing that stood out to me from the textbook material was the statistics regarding substance abuse within the LGBTQ+ community. According to the textbook roughly 33% of individuals who identify as gay or lesbian are substance users compared to just 22% of heterosexuals (Kim & Hayes, 2022). A recent study by the National Institute of Health revealed that
there is a lack of treatment programs available that can meet the specific needs of this community. Further this study cited only 17.6% of all substance
abuse facilities with specific programs relating to LGBTQ+ (Williams & Fish, 2020).
Another piece of material that I found interesting although not surprising is that in the year 2018 roughly 69% of all new HIV cases in the United States belonged to homosexual men. This is largely resulting from unprotected sexual activities. Furthermore men of color represented 37% of the previous figure and transgender women accounted for an additional 27.7% of all HIV cases that same year (Kim & Hayes, 2022).
Finally, another piece of information that did not surprise me is that often members of the LGBTQ+ community suffer from feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and self-esteem issues all relating to factors stemming from minority stress. Minority stress can be defined as extreme stress that is experienced by individuals due to marginalized social concepts (Kim & Hayes, 2022). A study in 2020 found within a sample from Thailand that the prevalence of clinical depression was 40% within that sample and that this was correlated with factors related to minority stress. Additionally this study had also quoted a previous U.S. based study from 2016 in which clinical depressive symptoms occurred within a range of 30% to 65% amongst the community (Kittiteerasack et al., 2020).
The LGBTQ+ community will no doubt be encountered at some point during my career as a Christian counselor. I certainly think it’s important to understand what individuals in this community go through. Counseling individuals belonging to LGBTQ+ will pose unique challenges as a Christian counselor. It’s important in my opinion to develop a capacity to help them with these issues, while also avoiding any condoning of sin. Galatians 6:1 states that we who are spiritual should restore with a spirit of gentleness. By being gentle and patient a Christian counselor can be the light of Christ in a hurting person's life.
References:
CSB Bible: Christian standard bible: Youversion
. YouVersion | The Bible App | Bible.com. (n.d.).
https://www.bible.com/versions/1713-csb-christian-
standard-bible
Links to an external site.
Hays, D. G., & Erford, B. T. (2022). In
Developing multicultural counseling competence: A systems approach
(4th ed., pp. 671–680). essay, Pearson Education Inc.
Kittiteerasack, P., Steffen, A., & Matthews, A. (2020). The influence of minority stress on level of depression among Thai LGBT adults.
Jurnal Keperawatan Indonesia
,
23
(1), 74–84. https://doi.org/10.7454/jki.v23i1.1073
Williams, N. D., & Fish, J. N. (2020). The availability of lgbt‐specific mental health and substance abuse treatment in the United States.
Health Services Research
,
55
(6), 932–943. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.13559
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