BRUCCPro Expert sesssions

The Minority Stress Model proposes that structural oppression experienced due to a certain minority identity leads to higher rates of psychopathology, especially for adolescents and young adults. This also holds true for gender-diverse persons, that is, persons who experience their gender beyond the norms or stereotypes of the sex they were assigned at birth. Notably, the rates of death by suicide among transgender youth are substantially elevated compared to the general population. Traditionally, psychology and psychiatry pathologized diverse genders, however, contemporarily, the consensus in the mental health field is, that variation in gender identity is healthy and normal. Despite this progress, stigma and discrimination still play a vital role in chronic psychological distress in gender-diverse people. Gender-affirmative interventions that target the predictors of stress and improve resilience have the potential to improve mental health in gender-diverse persons despite experiencing discrimination and stigma. This talk will give an overview of the construction of gender, intersectionality, and gender affirmative interventions within the context of clinical psychology as well as introduce the current research project POWER. 

Laura Maria Lingenti is a PhD student at VUB under the supervision of Prof. Imke Baetens and Prof. Kris Baetens. They earned their bachelor’s degree in psychology and completed their master’s degree in cognitive and clinical neuroscience, specialising in psychopathology, at Maastricht University. Following their studies, they gained experience working for a WLINA*-organisation providing an assisted living initiative for (multi-)marginalised girls, transgender, and non-binary adolescents in Berlin. In 2023, they won the Brussels Innoviris Applied PhD grant for their proposal on designing and testing a resilience-building intervention for gender-diverse persons in Brussels.