Transcultural Care and Mental Health

Introduction to Transcultural Care and Mental Health

Nurses for psychological health often need to encounter the requirements of patrons from a diversified cultural ethnicity and background. The cultural requirements of psychological health patrons can be accomplished by the provision of transcultural nursing. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex (LGBT) community is an ellipsis that is used for the people who decide on that gender or sexual individuality labels that is in personally meaningfull for them. Gender or sexual identities are quite intricate and are historically situated. In this era, youth have come out talking about their sexual preferences at younger ages and the public has also started supporting LGBTI issues and the support is increasing with each passing day, even after all this LGBTI youth continue to remain at high risk of facing mental health disorders (Russel & Fish, 2016). This paper aims to provide an overview of the characteristics of LGBTI culture, its statistical demographic profile followed by their psychological health beliefs along with the implication for clinical care planning for the mental health of the LGBTI community.

Relevant Definitions

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, Intersex is an umbrella phrase. This includes a large number of population groups: lesbian refers to the homosexual woman; gay is the homosexual man; bisexual are those individuals who are attracted to both males and females; transgender are the ones who found their sex as different from their biological one while intersex is used for those people that have two sets of genitalia. Apart from them, there is also another acronym used for gay and that is Queer. Some individuals prefer to be called as queer to empower themselves in order to take their individuality “back from the bullies” (Hafeez et al, 2017).

Overview of Population

LGBTI is often considered as a particular minority group of population. When studied in a broad way, then, this population group have come from all ways of life and are actually from all the other population groups. The way LGBTI community people recognize themselves is prejudiced by many other factors and this includes their ethnicity, age, socioeconomic position, their experiences, and relationships with others (Australian Institute of Health And Welfare, 2018).

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2015), it has been estimated that there are 3.2% homosexual or bisexual adults and 2.4% are among those who themselves are not sure regarding their sexuality. As per the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2014), there are in total 3.0% of adults are have been identified themselves as lesbian, gay, or they have chosen an ‘other’ sexual orientation.

It has been reportedly showed that some of the service contributors presume that their patrons use heterosexist language and might be heterosexual, this results in the discomfort for patrons and results in not disclosing their LGBTI status or discussing their sexuality or gender (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2015). Recuperating access to suitable services is considered as significant because of the higher rates of psychological health issues. These issues include anxiety, depression, and suicide that have been experienced by LGBTI community members. Research has specified that stress and anxiety faced by the people attracted by the same-gender are increasing among young people. Bullying, feelings of shame, hopelessness, fear, confusion is often faced by the community member while they accepted their sexuality in front of the public. Rather, they have been driven by the trepidation of discrimination or have actually faced discrimination by the means of organizations that are imperative in the lives of young people. These organizations include health services, schools, and welfare services (National LGBTI Health Alliance, 2016).

Health Care Beliefs of LGBTI Community

The LGBTI community members are at higher risk for sexually transmitted diseases, cancers, substance use, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, bullying, rejection, isolation, depression, and suicide as compared to the non-LGBTI population or general population. LGBTI community people are often given deprived quality of care because of stigma, lack of awareness among the healthcare professionals, lack of culturally competent providers, insufficient social services, and sometimes due to the insensitivity to the distinctive requirements of people of this community (Rowee et al, 2017).

It has been seen that people of the LGBTI community are more prone to be secluded and detached from the social networks. This drifting apart results in increasing the risk of depressive symptoms among community members. This population group tends to face considerable social discrimination, stigmatization, and marginalization. This thing contributes to the negative outcomes of the patients. Subsequently, the people of the community often experience high rates of psychological health concerns. These psychological issues are bipolar disorders, anxiety, suicide, and depression (Russel & Fish, 2016).

However, the people of the LGBTI population group also experiences individual as well as structural barriers that obstructs with their capability of accessing high-quality of care. As mentioned previously that LGBTI individuals also experience health care obstacles because of multiple attributes. These multiple attributes include insufficient social services, isolation, and a lack of culturally competent providers while, at the very same time, many healthcare providers experience a lot of obstacles in providing care to the LGBTI individuals (Stinchcombe et al, 2017). One of the personal barriers that have been faced by LGBTI individuals in receiving quality care is stigmatization towards the community persons as articulated through healthcare providers’ beliefs, prejudice, attitudes, and behaviors. Some dynamics such as race, religion, and gender beliefs also persuade the attitudes to LGBTI health care. To overcome this there is a need to augment the cultural competence among the healthcare providers by increasing and bettering the awareness, knowledge, and receptivity (Hafeez et al, 2017).

Responding to the psychological health issues is not something that can be attained by any definite or unambiguous part of the arrangement in isolation. There is a need to working together at both local as well as national levels between the private, public, the third sector, and most importantly with the LGBTI community also. Working together has the potential to encourage improved psychological health and wellbeing of LGBTI community members (Russel & Fish, 2016).

Implications for Care Planning

Individuals of the LGBTI community have been presented with cisnormative and heteronormative postulations when interfacing with social service and the healthcare providers and such presumptions potentially contributes to lacking the trust and belief towards the healthcare providers. Unconstructive communal attitudes, homophobia, discrimination, and transphobia shapes the end-of-life experiences for the individuals of LGBT community and therefore, there is a need to consider these by the care providers while offering them care along with the need for the provision of LGBTI-centered health care and the health promotion strategies; for that the healthcare professionals are supposed to espouse a better indulgent of particular hard and soft skills (Stinchcombe et al, 2017).

Some efforts should be made for developing educational materials for addressing the requirements of the individuals of the LGBTI community to the healthcare workers. However, healthcare professionals often have a heteronormative viewpoint & lack of professional knowledge as well as education regarding palliative care for the individuals of the LGBTI community. Thus, for this, there is a need for being culturally competent and provide culturally competent care to them (Stinchcombe et al, 2017).

Communication among the healthcare providers and the patients has always been a barrier in the provision of quality care to the individuals of the LGBTI community. This is why building effective communication is a way to implicate effective care planning for the LGBTI community. Recommendations have shown that there are certain techniques that help in improving the communication between the healthcare professionals and the patients. This can be done by implementing an open & asserting approach by the healthcare providers while interacting with the patients or their family members. It has been reportedly found that healthcare professionals should use comprehensive language while interacting with patients along with, working in such a way that patient’s confidentiality and privacy remain maintained (Lampalzer et al, 2019).

Conclusion on Transcultural Care and Mental Health

It has been seen that people of the LGBTI community are more prone to be secluded and detached from the social networks. This drifting apart results in increasing the risk of depressive symptoms among community members. This population group tends to face considerable social discrimination, stigmatization, and marginalization. This thing contributes to the negative outcomes of the patients. Subsequently, the people of the community often experience high rates of psychological health concerns. These psychological issues are bipolar disorders, anxiety, suicide, and depression and to decrease the graph of this there is a need to implicate LGBTI-centered care.

References for Transcultural Care and Mental Health

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2015). Same-sex couples in Australia. Retrieved from: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Same-Sex%20Couples~85

Australian Institute of health and welfare. (2018). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. Retrieved from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/61521da0-9892-44a5-85af-857b3eef25c1/aihw-aus-221-chapter-5-5.pdf.aspx#:~:text=The%202016%20National%20Drug%20Strategy,as%20not%20sure%2Fother%20orientation.

Hafeez, H., Zeshan, M., Tahir, M. A., Jahan, N., & Naveed, S. (2017). Health care disparities among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth: A literature review. Cureus, 9(4), e1184. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.1184

Lampalzer, U., Behrendt, P., Dekker, A., Briken, P., & Nieder, T. O. (2019). The needs of LGBTI people regarding health care structures, prevention measures and diagnostic and treatment procedures: A qualitative study in a German metropolis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(19), 3547. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193547

National LGBTI Health Alliance. (2016). Health and wellbeing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex [LGBTI] people and sexuality, gender, and bodily diverse people and communities throughout Australia. Retrieved from: https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/241433/sub494-mental-health.pdf

Rowe, D., Ng, Y. C., O'Keefe, L., & Crawford, D. (2017). Providers' attitudes and knowledge of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender health. Federal Practitioner, 34(11), 28–34. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6370394/

Russell, S. T., & Fish, J. N. (2016). mental health in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 12, 465–487. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093153

Stinchcombe, A., Smallbone, J., Wilson, K., & Kortes-Miller, K. (2017). Healthcare and end-of-life needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older adults: A scoping review. Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland), 2(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/geriatrics2010013

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