LGBT Resource Guide - Introduction

John E. Pachankis, M.A.
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Chair, APAGS - Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns

The creation of the Resource Guide for LGBT Students in Psychology was spurred by a wish from the members of the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns (CLGBTC) of the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) and its supporters. We all agreed that a manual to help us navigate the complex issues we faced as LGBT graduate students (e.g.., finding guidance and support for our interests, our LGBT-related experiences, and the ways in which we choose to express ourselves) was sorely needed. What you now have in front of you is a result of a collaborative effort that turned this wish into reality.

Over a decade ago, CLGBTC issued a pamphlet for LGBT students that briefly highlighted some of the concerns that LGBT students may face in graduate school and provided a list of LGBT-related resources. Clearly, the experience of being LGBT has changed quite a bit in the last ten years, both in society and within our profession. Since then, LGBT individuals have gained more ground in the struggle for social equality and mainstream society has increasingly recognized the existence of non-heterosexual individuals.

Still, in many domains of society, LGBT individuals continue to be harassed, discriminated against, belittled, or ignored. Many psychologists have successfully advocated for change within our profession, yet things are far from perfect. While many LGBT graduate students find support for their identities in their graduate programs, reports of bias and discrimination still exist (e.g., Pilkington & Cantor, 1996). The LGBT organizations within the American Psychological Association continue to support the advancement of equality for, and the end of discrimination against, LGBT students. The encouragement and support that APAGS leaders have provided for the creation of this updated, more comprehensive guide is a reflection of that support.

The title, Resource Guide, may be misleading to some. Rather than simply providing a list of resources (although such a list is included in the final section), this guide is filled with suggestions, advice, and support from a variety of LGBT psychology graduate students. The Guide is presented as a series of chapters, each of which address a distinct set of issues. Some of these include discussions of assessing the LGBT climate of your program, coming out in your program, coming out as a student-therapist, establishing a support system at your institution, confronting heterocentric attitudes in graduate school, advocating for the inclusion of LGBT-related issues in your program, facing the challenges involved in conducting LGBT-related research, and resources for support. These chapters are purposely written by diverse authors to ensure that a broad range of perspectives is represented.

If the concerns of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals are under-addressed in the field as a whole, it is safe to say that the unique concerns of other LGBT groups, including individuals who identify as transsexual, transgender, or gender variant are represented even more scarcely. As we compiled each chapter of this guide, we attempted to highlight the unique concerns of these groups, while also including a separate chapter on tips for transgender students. There is certainly overlap among all sexual minority groups (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) and we believe that the information in this guide will apply to many LGBT individuals. Yet we also believe that there is so much that is unique about each group that it is important to explore the differences between groups where relevant. It is our hope that we identified the places where such special consideration is important.

In preparing this guide, we solicited contributions from individuals who could offer a unique perspective on the topic at hand. As one of our primary aims in creating this resource is to provide a student’s perspective on the issues, many contributors to the guide were graduate students in psychology at the time of publication. This is a unique strength of this guide and fulfills one of the main goals of the APAGS-CLGBTC and APAGS, namely, providing a student-driven forum in which to raise issues from a viewpoint that may not be offered elsewhere.

We also think that it is important to note that the contributors to the guide are over-represented in the practice domains of psychology, namely, clinical and counseling. Still, throughout the guide we attempted to address the unique concerns facing those individuals who call home one of the many other areas of psychology, for example, cognitive, developmental, industrial/organizational, social, and neuroscience. These students, no doubt, confront unique issues and we, therefore, tried to make sure that these perspectives were included as well.

We compiled this guide both for current and prospective LGBT graduate students and those students who may not identify as LGBT but who have a personal or academic interest in the issues facing LGBT individuals. Many LGBT students probably include heterosexual colleagues among their strongest advocates. There is no doubt that many individuals who do not identify as LGBT are concerned about the issues that face LGBT individuals. We hope that they, too, find this guide to be useful in helping to better understand the unique set of issues that many of their LGBT colleagues face.

The APAGS-CLGBTC members are excited to provide this guide for you. We hope that you find it helpful and will come to us with any comments or unanswered questions. APAGS-CLGBTC maintains an active listserv, APAGSLGBT, which you can join by going to APAGS’s homepage (www.apa.org/apags) and clicking “listservs.” We think that the APAGSLGBT listserv is a great way to bring LGBT and LGBT-interested students together. If you are further interested in the issues discussed in this guide, we invite you to bring them to the listserv as there are likely to be many other students with similar interests. Sharing them in this way continues the mission of this guide—to offer advice and support to LGBT students in psychology.

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