"Gathering the Pieces Back Together": The Experiences of Queer Second-Generation South Asians in Counselling and Psychotherapy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Second-generation South Asian sexual minorities endure numerous challenges to their mental health and well-being often arising from their generational, ethnoracial and sexual identities, which are difficult to reconcile and develop into a cohesive and consistent personal identity due to discriminatory ideologies and experiences within ethnocultural/religious communities, mainstream queer spaces and Western society. These individuals must also adhere to the codes of South Asian family life and navigate competing cultural influences. Yet, queer second-generation South Asians seem to underutilize counselling services, suggesting that the mental health needs of this population may be unmet. Furthermore, whether psychotherapeutic practice can effectively address the mental health needs of this community remains unclear given the paucity of research and practice literature. The present study aimed to better understand the mental health and treatment-seeking experiences of this community through the research question: What are the experiences of queer second-generation South Asian clients in counselling and psychotherapy? Participants consisted of thirteen (cisgender) women and men of South Asian descent, who were born in Canada, identified as queer and had experience in counselling and psychotherapy. Research methods involved qualitative interviewing and the use of social constructivist grounded theory. Four key themes emerged: Experience Leading Up to Initial Counselling and Psychotherapy, Experience Inside Counselling and Psychotherapy, Impacts of Counselling and Psychotherapy and The Therapy Relationship. Findings suggest that queer second-generation South Asians first engage therapy in particular conditions, including the presence of multiple issues that overwhelm and isolate them, and when access to therapeutic supports are availed through personal circumstances and resources. Moreover, the presence (or absence) of topics and processes in therapy shape their experiences both inside and outside the counselling space. Ultimately, engaging in psychotherapy impacts these clients personally, relationally and experientially. Notably, all participants were multiple users of psychotherapy, and over time psychotherapeutic engagement was increasingly oriented towards a therapy relationship seemingly capable of supporting the integration of their identities and experiences. A mid-level theory was generated from this study’s findings. Additionally, implications of this research on the field of psychotherapy and directions for future research are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".