Resources | Clients in the LGBTQ+ community

• Counseling Today Articles

  • Addressing intimate partner violence with LGBTQ+ clients
  • Supporting transgender and gender-expansive youth
  • Breaking the binary: Transgender and gender expansive equality
  • Listening to voices of color in the LGBTQ+ community
  • Pride in practice: The journey towards LGBTQ+ counseling competence
  • Helping counselors who serve sexual and gender minority youth 
  • Counselor considerations for disclosing LGBTQ+ identity
  • Affirming all shades of the rainbow
  • Promoting LGBTQ students’ well-being in schools
  • Legislative bills increase fear and trauma in transgender community

• Books

  

  Handbook for Human Sexuality Counseling: A Sex Positive Approach
  edited by Angela M. Schubert and Mark Pope
  
  Expert clinicians discuss myriad topics related to sexuality through the lens of radical acceptance in this new handbook. Each chapter illustrates an affirmative, empowering and expansive approach that considers clients’ sexual and cultural identities and emphasizes sexual wellness and expression.

  
  

  Affirmative Counseling with LGBTQI+ People
  Misty M. Ginicola, Cheri Smith, and Joel M. Filmore
  
  In this comprehensive handbook, experts in the field provide direction for working with diverse LGBTQI+ clients in an authentic, ethical, and affirmative manner that is tailored to their individual strengths, needs, and identity.

  
  
  

  Suicide Assessment and Treatment Planning for Counselors: A Strengths-Based Approach
  John Sommers-Flanagan and Rita Sommers-Flanagan
  
  In this new book, John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan discuss how to work effectively with children, adolescents, and adults who are suicidal. Their wellness-oriented approach addresses how to best assist clients in distress while also helping counselors to focus on their own mental health.

  A Concise Guide to Opioid Addiction for Counselors
  Kevin Alderson and Samuel T. Gladding
  
  This affordable, evidence-based guide is replete with information and resources that can be immediately applied to addiction work. Appendixes include a listing of 20 opioid drugs in descending order of potency; common ICD-10, ICD-10-CM, and ICD-11 codes; and a glossary of terms and abbreviations.

  
  

  Youth at Risk
  Seventh Edition
  David Capuzzi and Douglas R. Gross

  Youth at Risk provides prevention-oriented, strength-based strategies for assisting children and teens who engage in risky behaviors such as substance abuse, abnormal eating, suicide attempts, or unsafe sexual practices and are exposed to environmental factors like abuse, bullying, violence, and homelessness.

• Journals

  • The influence of teaching philosophy on coverage of LGBTQ issues in counseling courses
  • LGBTQI+ responsive school counseling: Exemplary school counselor educators’ curricular integration
  • Psychology of working counseling framework applied to a gender diverse restaurant worker during COVID-19
  • Religious counselors and LGBTQ+ clients: A Q-sort of value navigation
  • “Wellness is wholeness”: Explorations of wellness among Black gay men
  • Barriers of Chinese gay men to counseling
  • Cass's homosexual identity formation: A critical analysis
  • Centralizing the voices of queer womxn of color in counseling
  • The cultural closet: The South Asian American experience of keeping romantic relationships secret
  • Mental health care experiences of trans service members and veterans: A mixed-methods study
  • Sociodemographics, beliefs, and attitudes as determinants of college students' career aspirations
  • Christian counselors and affirmative counseling of lesbian and gay clients

• Resolutions & Statements

  In recent years ACA Governing Council has adopted a number of resolution and advocacy statements in support of the LGBTQ+ community.

  Approved Advocacy Statement for Transgender and Nonbinary Issues and Concerns - March 25-27, 2019
  The American Counseling Association (ACA) is committed to nondiscrimination and prevention of harassment in all forms (verbal, physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological), including protections for all diverse groups including protections for transgender and nonbinary individuals. ACA recognizes the stress and psychological impact of discrimination and is committed to helping counselors advocate for nondiscrimination policies and practices in their schools, colleges/universities, clinical mental health settings, communities, and in the nation. ACA encourages counselors to utilize the American Counseling Association Competencies for Counseling with Transgender Clients, the ACA Advocacy Competencies and the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies when working with individuals, their families, and the organizational institutions that are impacted.

   

• Online Courses

  CE Products

• Partner Resources

  The 2018 LGBTQ Youth Report. The HRC Foundation and the University of Connecticut released the largest-of-its-kind survey of more than 12,000 LGBTQ teenagers across the nation, revealing in distressing detail the persistent challenges so many of them face going about their daily lives at home, at school, and in their communities.
  Human Rights Campaign (2018). 2018 LGBTQ youth report. Retrieved from
  https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/2018-YouthReport-0514-Final.pdf 

• Additional Resources

  Counseling LGBTQ Adults Throughout the Life Span is a training and conceptual guide that can supplement the literature and practice knowledge for those working with adults who identify as a member of the LGBTQ community. The guide is a compilation of experiences of many professional counselors, counselor educators, counseling supervisors, and leaders in the counseling profession, and it is hoped that the guide will illuminate the diverse views within the adult developmental process as it pertains to issues of mental health, life satisfaction, and a focus on the uniqueness of the LGBTQ adult population.