Voice and Mental Health Support for Trans Teens and Their Parents: A Workshop Model

Abstract

Providing parents and their teenage children with an opportunity to experience voice modification techniques and discussions about mental health issues could alleviate some of their tremendous minority stress. Speech-language pathologists and counselors can use experiential learning and a multidimensional family approach to support parents and their trans teenagers to build connections and learn individual perspectives on their personal phases of transitioning. Participants of the 3-hour webinar included nine dyads of parents and youths across the United States. Topics on voice modification and mental health strategies were presented. Only parents completed the pre- and post-surveys to measure confidence in their knowledge to support their youth's voice and mental health needs. There were 10 Likert scale questions (5 voice, 5 mental health). The Kruskal–Wallis H-test results revealed that the median responses to the pre and post voice survey did not show a statistically significant change (H = 8.0, p = 0.342). Similarly, the mental health surveys did not reach significance (H = 8.0, p = 0.433). However, the growth trend shows strong promise for developing effective future experiential training workshops as a viable service provision for increasing parents' knowledge in supporting their trans child's voice and mental health needs.

Keywords

Transgender youth - voice training and mental health - experiential learning - mental health - parent support

Disclosures

M.S. is a clinical associate professor and an employee of Arizona State University. She has no financial or nonfinancial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

R.J.R. is a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University. He has no financial or nonfinancial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

J.S. is a counselor in private practice. He has no financial or nonfinancial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Publication History

Article published online:
07 March 2023

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