In-Service: How did the 2024 legislative session affect LGBTQ+ Utahns and their loved ones?

Title: How did the 2024 legislative session affect LGBTQ+ Utahns and their loved ones?

Speaker and Degree: Lisa Diamond, PhD

Description: For the past several years, the annual Utah legislative session has introduced new threats to the LGBTQ+ community, and the weeks between January and March have become marked by alternating moments of anxiety, outrage, and solidarity.  Clinicians often wonder how best to support LGBTQ+ clients during these moments, and so my research team conducted an assessment of longitudinal change in mental health among LGBTQ+ Utahns and their loved ones, over the course of the 2024 session.  Over 1900 respondents filled out a brief online survey at the beginning of the session, in mid-January, and one third of these participants completed a follow-up assessment after the session had ended, in late March.  Results show that:

(1) a majority of LGBTQ+ participants think they might leave Utah within 10 years, due to the political climate;

(2) cisgender/heterosexual family members of LGBTQ+ individuals underwent bigger declines in mental health than did LGBTQ+ individuals,

(3) the strongest predictor of mental health declines during the legislative session was change in social safety – i.e.,losing versus gaining access to unconditionally affirming social groups.  During this presentation, I will discuss the implications of these findings for addressing stigma-related distress at a community level and within individual clinical practice.

Learning Objectives: Based on this presentation I… 

1...  am familiar with the minority stress and social safety models of stigma-related health problems.

2... understand differences between the experiences of LGBTQ+ Utahns versus their cisgender-heterosexual family members over the course of the legislative session.

3... understand why unconditionally affirming friendships may be one of the most effective buffers against the negative psychological effects of Utah’s political climate.

CEU’s have been applied for and are pending from Utah Psychological Association.