LGBTQ

06/08/21 • 43 min

Before Stonewall, the gay community lived in the shadows and even after this monumental protest and other significant milestones, the LGBTQ community still faces discrimination, abuse, and aggressive behaviors in their day-to-day lives. Dr. Virani discusses the issues at the core of the mental health challenges to the LGBTQ community referencing history where applicable, with Dr. Elie Aoun and Dr. Ali Haidar, two New York-based psychiatrists.

Subjects discussed:

Conversion therapy
Queer expression of identity
Dealing with cultural values in a therapeutic relationship
Biased diagnoses due to sexual orientation
Doctors pathologizing based on negative implications of sexual practices
LGBTQ identifying psychiatrists facing micro and macro aggressions from administration and patients
Supporting LGBTQ trainees

Dr. Sanya Virani, host

Dr. Elie Aoun is a psychiatrist in general, addiction, and forensic practice in New York, on faculty at Columbia University, and at Central New York Psychiatric Center as the Sex Offender Management Liaison psychiatrist. He completed his general psychiatry residency at Brown University in Providence, RI, Addiction Psychiatry fellowship at UCSF in San Francisco, and Forensic Psychiatry fellowship at the Columbia University Cornell University combined program, and a fellowship in psychiatric research at Columbia University. He is the ECP Trustee at large for the APA and the immediate past Vice-Chair of the APA Council on Addiction Psychiatry. He works closely with medical students as well as psychiatric residents and fellows at Columbia University where he serves as a co-director of the sexual behavior clinic and rotation.

Dr. Ali Haidar completed his psychiatry residency at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and is currently a PGY-5 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Chief fellow at Mount Sinai in New York. His primary areas of interest include LGBTQ mental health, public psychiatry, cultural psychiatry, medical education, and global mental health particularly displacement and migration’s effect on the psyche. He is currently an APA leadership fellow and serves as ECP member of the APA Council on International Psychiatry and Global Health.

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Subjects discussed:

Conversion therapy
Queer expression of identity
Dealing with cultural values in a therapeutic relationship
Biased diagnoses due to sexual orientation
Doctors pathologizing based on negative implications of sexual practices
LGBTQ identifying psychiatrists facing micro and macro aggressions from administration and patients
Supporting LGBTQ trainees

Dr. Sanya Virani, host

Other Finding Our Voice episodes

Other podcasts from the APA

Previous Episode

Asian Americans

There has been a dramatic upsurge in violence against Asian Americans over the last year since the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan China. In this episode, Dr. Virani talks with Asian American and Pacific Islander Doctors about their experiences with racial trauma and cultural boundaries that have affected them and the lives of their patients.

Discussed in this episode

The history of xenophobia against AAPIs
DSM-5 cultural formation interview and its evolution
Understanding the larger social context in which a patient lives
Recommendations on how providers should respond to racist verbal assault and hate speech.
Misdiagnosis due to lack of understanding of cultural issues
Ethnic preference and sharing trust with patients and providers
Cultural competence
The CLAS Blueprint
Cultural concepts of distress in the DSM

Peter Jongho Na, M.D., M.P.H., is an addiction psychiatry fellow at Yale University.

Francis G. Lu, M.D., is the Luke & Grace Kim Professor in Cultural Psychiatry, Emeritus, at the University of California, Davis. As a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Dr. Lu has contributed to the areas of cultural psychiatry including the interface with religion/spirituality, psychiatric education, diversity/inclusion, mental health equity, and psychiatry/film.

Dr. Connie Chen is a PGY-2 at the San Mateo County Psychiatry Residency Training Program in San Mateo, CA. She is also Co-Chair of the San Mateo County Chinese Health Initiative, where she coordinates efforts to promote access to mental health services and reduce stigma around mental illness in local Chinese and Asian American communities. Her interests include cultural psychiatry, psychotherapy, and public psychiatry.

Peter Na's Psychiatric News Article

www.thinkculturalhealth.hhs.gov

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Next Episode

Indigenous Peoples

This episode focuses on the Indigenous community, Dr. Virani discusses the systemic racism issues faced by this community with two psychiatrists who have Native American heritage, Dr. Mary Hasbah Roessel, a psychiatrist at the Santa Fe Service Unit in Santa Fe Indian Hospital working in the outpatient Behavioral Health Clinic in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is Navajo from the southwestern US. Dr. Stefanie Gillson, who is Dakota Sioux and is finishing up her 4th-year psychiatry resident at Yale University and starting her Child & Adolescent Fellowship at Yale.

In this episode Dr. Virani and our guests examine