A/Professor Ashleigh Lin
‘Mindful Self-Compassion for LGBTIQ youth: A multi-site randomised controlled trial.’
University of Western Australia, WA
Awarded 2020
“LGBTIQ young people are at higher risk for poor mental health than their non-LGBTIQ peers, however, mental health interventions may not be appropriate to their specific needs.”
Researcher Profile
Associate Professor Ashleigh Lin is an NHMRC Career Development Fellow and Program Head of Mental Health and Youth at the Telethon Kids Institute. Her research is focused on better understanding the mental health needs of young people, and then developing novel interventions to address them.
She has a specific focus on marginalised groups of young people who tend to have poorer mental health than their mainstream peers, but also less access to acceptable and effective interventions.
Project Summary
Young adults who are as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer or questioning (LGBTIQ) are more likely to experience mental health problems and engage in self-harm and suicidal behaviours than their mainstream peers. There is an urgent need for effective mental health treatments that meet their specific needs and that helps build their resilience. In this study, we are considering a concept called self-compassion.
Self-compassion is the capacity to be kind and understanding to yourself during times of difficulty or perceived failure. Because we know that self-compassion is related to mental health in LGBTIQ individuals, improving self-compassion is likely to lead to improvements in mental wellbeing. We will test this by providing training in Mindful Self-Compassion to approximately 70 Australian LGBTIQ young adults (18-25 years) who are experiencing mental distress.
The 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion training course will be conducted in Perth and Melbourne. We will examine participants’ levels of distress (such as anxiety and depression), their self-compassion and other related concepts before the training, immediately after it has finished and 2 months later to see if there are improvements. We will also explore whether LGBTIQ young people liked the training and whether any adaptations need to be made.
Mindful Self-Compassion has the potential to be developed as an online intervention to facilitate wider access. This makes it a cost-effective treatment to reduce risk of mental health difficulties and enhance wellbeing in LGBTIQ young people across Australia
Co-Investigators: Dr Amy Finlay-Jones, Dr Jeneva Ohan, Penelope Struass and Dr Yael Perry