Abstract

Multicultural topics, such as LGBTQ+ experience, have accrued predominance within the field of psychology. It has become clear that better understanding minority experience is of utmost importance. Pervasive stigma, discrimination, and mistreatment culminate into minority stress; thus LGBTQ+ individuals face greater risk for poor mental health and seek out psychotherapy at higher rates. Despite this reality, limited psychotherapy research exists in this area generally and essentially no research has looking into the experience of LGBTQ+ individuals in group therapy. The current study investigated experiences of LGBTQ+ clients who have participated in both individual and group psychotherapy. Eleven participants were interviewed and their data analyzed according to the methods of Consensual Qualitative Analysis (CQR; Hill & Knox, 2021). Themes emerged including reasons for seeking therapy, therapy's impact, therapeutic mechanisms of change, format differences, and recommendation to others. Results showed that participants typically sought out individual therapy due to depression/anxiety or other mental health concerns. Participants were also typically referred to group therapy by their individual therapist for the interpersonal benefits. Participants were typically internally distressed regarding their queer identity when starting individual and typically interpersonally distressed regarding their queer identity when starting group therapy. Therapeutic relationship, therapeutic environment, and therapeutic techniques were the most typically reported mechanism of change within individual therapy. Many variant mechanisms of change were for group, although universality and group cohesion were most reported. Individual therapy generally had a positive impact on queer identity development. Group therapy typically had a positive impact on queer identity development as well as having other typical positive impacts. Further, participants generally identified individual therapy's intrapsychic focus and group therapy's interpersonal focus as defining differences between the formats. Generally, this study provides preliminary findings on the unique differences and benefits of both individual and group therapy for those in the queer community.

Degree

PhD

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Psychology

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2025-03-07

Document Type

Dissertation

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd13543

Keywords

LGBTQ+, sexual and gender minorities, consensual qualitative research (CQR), group therapy, individual therapy, queer identity, identity development

Language

english

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