Homework Assignments and Handouts for LGBTQ+ Clients: A Mental Health and Counseling Handbook

Featuring over 70 affirming interventions in the form of homework assignments, handouts, and activities, this comprehensive volume helps novice and experienced counselors support LGBTQ+ community members and their allies.

Each chapter includes an objective, indications and contraindications, a case study, suggestions for follow-up, professional resources, and references. The book’s social justice perspective encourages counselors to hone their skills in creating change in their communities while helping their clients learn effective coping strategies in the face of stress, bullying, microaggressions, and other life challenges. The volume also contains a large section on training allies and promoting greater cohesion within LGBTQ+ communities.

Counseling and mental health services for LGBTQ+ clients require between-session activities that are clinically focused, evidence based, and specifically designed for one or more LGBTQ+ sub-populations. This handbook gathers together the best of such LGBTQ+ clinically focused material. As such, it will appeal both to students learning affirmative LGBTQ+ psychotherapy/counseling and to experienced practitioners. Offering practical tools used by clinicians worldwide, the volume is particularly useful for courses in clinical and community counseling, social work, and psychology. Those new to working with LGBTQ+ clients will appreciate the book’s accessible foundation to guide interventions.

Joy S. Whitman, PhD, is a licensed professional counselor (LPC) in Missouri and a licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) in Illinois. She is clinical professor at The Family Institute of Northwestern University in the master’s Counseling@Northwestern program. A past president of ALGBTIC, Joy serves as a board member of The International Academy for LGBT+ Psychology and Related Fields. She maintains a private practice in Missouri.

Cyndy J. Boyd, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, consultant, and psychotherapist in private practice in Philadelphia. She is director of training at Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Pennsylvania. She has served on the APA Commission on Accreditation, the board of directors of ALGBTIC of the American Counseling Association, the supervision and training section of Division 17 of the American Psychological Association (APA), and the Association of Counseling Center Training Agencies.