Parental Media Intervention for Resilience in LGBTQ+ Youth

Media portrayals of coping with adversity and mastering crisis situations play an important role in suicide prevention. LGBTQ+ adolescents are an under-researched risk group for suicide. In this project, we will (1) develop and (2) evaluate a brief media intervention delivered by parents of LGBTQ+ children to other parents who are struggling with the coming out of their kid. The intervention aims to increase parental acceptance and reduce mental ill-health among parents and their LGBTQ+ kids. Focus groups and co-design workshops with parents of LGBTQ+ youth as well as LGBTQ+ youth will serve as a basis for the development of video messages. The video messages will feature parents speaking about their experiences with specific core aspects of coming-out that might help other parents in similar situations. We will then assess the effects of the videos developed with parents and their LGBTQ+ kids. Specifically, we will investigate how the videos impact parental acceptance, engagement with their childs identity, parental stress, depressive symptoms and anxiety, compared to a control group. Further, we will explore effects of the parental intervention from their kids perspective, particularly regarding changes in parental acceptance, parent-child interaction, depressive symptoms, anxiety and suicidal ideation. Possible mechanisms behind any effects of the intervention in terms of parental processes involved and parental identification with the intervention materials will be analyzed. Focus groups with parents who completed the intervention will serve to gain further insight into broader effects of the intervention, benefits and challenges encountered, and to make recommendations for similar projects. This project is important because there is a dearth of knowledge on interventions that increase suicide resilience among LGBTQ+ youth, in spite of them being a risk group for mental ill-health and suicide. Particularly research looking at parent-child dyads as well as research with a good representation of parents of transgender youth is entirely lacking. The findings on the potentials of a brief media intervention co-designed by parents and youth will provide much-needed novel insight into resilience-building in young LGBTQ+ people.