"What Works" to Support LGBTQ+ Young People's Mental Health: An Intersectional Youth Rights Approach.

Despite overwhelming international evidence of elevated rates of poor mental health in LGBTQ+ youth compared to their cis-heterosexual peers, we know relatively little about effective mental health services for this population group. This study aims to produce the first early intervention model of "what works" to support LGBTQ+ youth with emerging mental health problems. Utilizing a mixed method case study, we collected data across 12 UK mental health service case study sites that involved: (a) interviews with young people, parents, and mental health practitioners (n = 93); (b) documentary analysis; (c) nonparticipant observation. The data analysis strategy was theoretical using the "explanation-building" analytical technique. Our analysis suggests an intersectional youth rights approach with 13 principles that must be enacted to provide good mental health services as advocated by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and World Health Organization. This approach should address the multiple forms of marginalization and stigmatization that LGBTQ+ youth may experience, enable informed independent decision-making, and uphold the right to freedom of safe self-expression. A rights-based approach to mental health services for LGBTQ+ young people is not prominent. This needs to change if we are to tackle this mental health inequality and improve the mental well-being of LGBTQ+ youth worldwide.

Explaining effective mental health support for LGBTQ+ youth: A meta-narrative review.

This meta-narrative review on mental health early intervention support for LGBTQ+ â€‹youth aimed to develop a theoretical framework to explain effective mental health support. Using the RAMESES standards for meta-narrative reviews, we identified studies from database searches and citation-tracking. Data extraction and synthesis was conducted through conceptual coding in Atlas.ti. in two stages: 1) conceptual mapping of the meta-narratives; 2) comparing the key concepts across the meta-narratives to produce a theoretical framework. In total, 2951 titles and abstracts were screened and 200 full papers reviewed. 88 studies were included in the final review. Stage 1 synthesis identified three meta-narratives - psychological, psycho-social, and social/youth work. Stage 2 synthesis resulted in a non-pathological theoretical framework for mental health support that acknowledged the intersectional aspects of LGBTQ+ â€‹youth lives, and placed youth at the centre of their own mental health care. The study of LGBTQ+ â€‹youth mental health has largely occurred independently across a range of disciplines such as psychology, sociology, public health, social work and youth studies. The interdisciplinary theoretical framework produced indicates that effective early intervention mental health support for LGBTQ+ â€‹youth must prioritise addressing normative environments that marginalises youth, LGBTQ+ â€‹identities and mental health problems.

Revolting bodies, desiring lesbians: an introduction.

This introduction gives the background to this special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies that has its origin in the 18th Annual Lesbian Lives Conference of 2011. It traces the theme of Revolting Bodies: Desiring Lesbians across the ten articles of this collection and gives a brief summary of each.

Revolting doubles: radical narcissism and the trope of lesbian doppelgangers.

This article is concerned with a repositioning of popular culture images and narratives that are, and have been, highly unpopular among queer audiences. This involves a re-engagement with the visual representation of lesbian lovers as doubles, ubiquitous in popular culture. It argues that by positioning the trope of the lesbian doppelgangers as it appears in popular culture on a continuum of visual representations of sameness and likeness that also includes feminist and queer art its qualities of radical or "absolute" narcissism are brought to the fore to be enjoyed as a subversive statement of highly self-referencing, auto-erotic, and self-sufficient economy of desire. In a reading of Black Swan (2010), a film that has attracted notable negative responses from feminist critics, it discusses how radical narcissism disturbs the heteronormative matrix through a refusal of its underpinning organization of desire and identification as exclusionary. It closes by engaging with contemporary artworks drawing on the doppelganger motif.