Minority Stress Counseling for LGBTQ+ Individuals (MST)

The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Minority Stress

Treatments: Behavioral: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; Behavioral: Treatment as Usual (TAU)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06614868

IRB-300013570

NBLAB1 (Other Identifier)

Details and patient eligibility

About

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+ (LGBTQ+) individuals experience a breadth of mental health disparities. Reducing these disparities is an area of key psychological research. Minority stress is theorized to be an underlying source of the disparities (Meyer, 2003). Minority stress can be conceptualized as the internalized stigma that results from experiences of social marginalization. By reducing minority stress, it is hypothesized that generalized mental illness indicators might be reduced and indicators of wellbeing increased.

Full description

Adult participants will respond to advertisements by emailing a research assistant.

A research assistant will then arrange for a pre-screening interview to ensure inclusion criteria are met.

A research assistant will review informed consent and receive a signed informed consent during the pre-screening.

Participants who are accepted into the study will then be offered up to 12 sessions of ACT or receive an unstructured treatment as usual counseling condition delivered by graduate students in the UAB medical/clinical psychology program under the supervision of Dr. Borgogna. These sessions will be 45 minutes each and delivered in Dr. Borgogna's lab. During the first sessions a survey battery will be administered on a lab secure computer administered via Qualtrics. It will be re-administered at session six, and during the last session.

The survey will include a broad base of demographic, mental health, and minority stress measures.

Participants will be assigned a random number that will link their survey responses across sessions. Identifying information will not be gathered as part of data collection.

Enrollment: 80 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Must identify as non-heterosexual

Exclusion criteria

Suicide attempt within the past 12 months.

Current eating disorder.

Narcotics use within the past 3 months

Non-suicidal self-injury within the past 6 months.

Current/History of psychosis

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

80 participants in 2 patient groups

Treatment Group

Experimental group

Description:

Participants receiving acceptance and commitment therapy

Treatment:

Behavioral: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Treatment as usual

Active Comparator group

Description:

Unstructured counseling intervention

Treatment:

Behavioral: Treatment as Usual (TAU)