Supporting Parents in Affirming Their Children's Experiences of Stigma

The purpose of this study is to develop and test the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy of two brief online writing interventions to improve parental acceptance of sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) in the Southeast United States. Parental support represents the strongest predictor of sexual and gender minority youth's (SGMY) mental health. However, many parents react to their SGMY's disclosure with rejection. Even relatively accepting parents can experience discomfort, while SGMY often report lingering unmet needs from their parents into adulthood. Few interventions exist to help parents support their SGMY child and none has been tested in a randomized trial with efficacy for decreasing parental rejection and increasing support of their SGMY. This proposal will develop and test the efficacy of two theory-based interventions that aim to address this gap. Results will identify mechanisms contributing to parental rejection and develop scalable approaches to reduce these mechanisms to shrink the substantial mental health disparities affecting SGMY. If efficacious, these interventions can be scaled up through online platforms capable of bypassing barriers to parental support of SGMY across high-stigma regions. The focus of this registration is the randomized controlled trial.