Mindfulness and Acceptance for Gender and Sexual Minorities: A Clinician’s Guide to Fostering Compassion, Connection, and Equality Using Contextual St

As more clinicians train in mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies, the demand for skills specifically for treating diverse clients grows. In this much-needed edited volume, you'll find evidence-based strategies for treating gender and sexual minorities with acceptance and compassion for better treatment outcomes.

Gender and sexual minorities face unique concerns and, according to research, are actually more likely to want and seek therapeutic help due to greater levels of psychological distress. But research also shows that many psychologists and therapists do not feel adequately educated or efficacious discussing topics related to sexuality and gender in clinical practice. This book will address this significant gap with evidence-based and best-practice interventions and applications.

Mindfulness and Acceptance for Gender and Sexual Minorities offers a number of practical strategies within a contextual behavioral science framework, including mindfulness and acceptance-based interventions, compassion-focused therapy (CFT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), relational frame theory (RFT), and more. With chapters on stigma, shame, relationships, and parenting, this book will be a valuable resource for all therapists.

If you're a clinician, you understand the ongoing need for cutting-edge, effective approaches for treating a variety of clients. With this guide, you'll learn about the unique application of contextual behavioral approaches as they relate specifically to the experiences of gender and sexual minorities, and feel better equipped to help all of your clients work toward happiness and health.

Editor Matthew D. Skinta, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical health psychologist who lives with his husband in San Francisco, CA. In addition to having a private practice, he is core clinical faculty at Palo Alto University, where he directs the Sexual and Gender Identities Clinic. Skinta’s past research has focused on the impact of stigma and shame on health behaviors of sexual minority men, particularly as it relates to sexual health and HIV-related care. He is a peer-reviewed acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) trainer, and is certified as both a compassion cultivation training (CCT) teacher, and as a trainer of functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP).

Editor Aisling Curtin, MSc, is a registered counseling psychologist at the Psychological Society of Ireland who lives with her partner in Dublin, Ireland. She is director of ACT Now Ireland, has a small private practice, and consults with a number of organizations to deliver acceptance and mindfulness workshops. Aisling teaches in many university training programs, and regularly gives workshops internationally on sexuality from a mindfulness and acceptance vantage point. She is a peer-reviewed ACT and FAP trainer.

Foreword writer John Pachankis, PhD, is associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University. He studies the mental health of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. His research specifically seeks to identify the psychological and social contextual influences that might explain LGBT individuals’ disproportionate experiences with several adverse mental health outcomes, like depression and substance abuse, and to translate the results of these studies into psychosocial interventions to improve the health of the LGBT community.