Title:
The Effectiveness Of A Transaffirmative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Group-Based Intervention To Help Transgender Individuals Suffering From Depression
Author:
Joy Riach
Published:
University of San Francisco, 2021
Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology (PsyD)
Abstract:
Transgender individuals report higher levels of elevated symptoms of depression and anxiety due to psychological distress caused by pervasive transphobic discrimination and prejudice that persist in pathologizing and stigmatizing their lived experiences. An important first step would be to develop, implement, and assess transaffirmative interventions that address the mental health issues that this population is particularly susceptible to, such as depression. This current study was designed to assess the effectiveness of one such culturally adapted intervention, which was a 5-week-long, group-based therapy developed for treating depression in transgender individuals using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This was then followed with one final session 1 month after the last session. The researcher hypothesized that participating in this intervention would result in a clinically significant reduction in depressive symptoms among the participants. The data were analyzed using a one-way repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA; Field, 2016) and a paired samples t-test (Laerd Statistics, 2018). The study consisted of 14 transgender individuals who were divided into three treatment groups. In March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the researcher adapted the intervention protocol to conducting individual therapy sessions over the phone. The results indicated that there was a significant difference in the means depressive symptoms scores for T1(preintervention) and T3 (1 month postintervention). Future researchers may wish to use a larger participant pool that includes a greater diversity of ethnic, cultural, geographical, and age groups. With this more diverse sample, more extensive analysis could be conducted, such as exploring differences between ethnicities, geographical locations, and age groups.