Transdiagnostic Approaches to Improve Sexual Minority Individuals’ Co-occurring Mental, Behavioral, and Sexual Health

Abstract

Sexual and gender minority individuals are at elevated risk of many adverse psychosocial health outcomes, including mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders, as well as suicidality and sexually transmitted infections. Despite greater utilization of mental health services, there remain few evidence-based approaches specifically tailored for sexual minority individuals and even fewer that are designed to explicitly address the multiple co-occurring conditions that afflict this group. This chapter describes one such approach, rooted in minority stress theory, that has been shown to empirically address the multitude of problematic outcomes and behaviors among sexual minority men and is currently being developed for sexual minority women. The chapter begins by describing the theoretical underpinnings of this therapeutic approach, subsequently providing a description of the major principles underlying this intervention. This chapter ends with an illustrative case example taken from the current clinical trials of this treatment program.