Penn Nursing Receives $3.3 Million NIH Grant to Support Families with Gay and Bisexual Sons

The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) has been awarded a $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop and evaluate a new intervention designed to improve communication between parents and their gay or bisexual adolescent sons.

LGBTQ+ students in collegiate recovery programs are doing very well but have unique needs

Compared to their cisgender/heterosexual peers, LGBTQ+ college students are at an elevated risk of substance use and mental health challenges. While collegiate recovery programs provide an array of support to students in recovery from substance use disorders, scarce research has examined the unique needs of LGBTQ+ students within this population.

Conversion therapy is discredited and increases risk of suicide

Pride Month is being marked by some lawmakers in Kentucky with a renewed push to ban “conversion therapy – the discredited practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
If successful, the bill, which aims to prohibit mental health professionals in the state from “engaging in sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts” with minors, would make Kentucky the 21st state in the U.S. to put in place such a prohibition. Two experts in mental health counseling explain why they welcome this move but remain concerned that at present many LGBTQ youth live in states that have no ban in place protecting them from conversion therapy – a practice that the scientific community has long since shunned.