Avoiding unhelpful statements: A proposed theoretical measure of readiness to work with transgender clients

When transgender people most need help, many face hostility and inadequate care from their health providers, including psychologists. This hostility is not surprising given widespread lack of familiarity with transgender issues or perspectives amongst clinicians. Even amongst those who hold the stance of openness to the other, most still have considerable difficulty working with transgender clients. Transgender training efforts vary in quality; some even appear to worsen attitudes towards transgender clients. Given these risks, it is crucial that clinical training directors and supervisors evaluate trainees\u27 abilities to facilitate respectful initial conversations with transgender clients. This project proposed an objective instrument for assessing a mental health clinician, or clinical trainees\u27 ability to discriminate between helpful and unhelpful responses commonly made in the initial clinical encounters with transgender clients. Development of the instrument is grounded in a combination of theoretical and empirical literature on the topic and is synthesized with the personal and professional experiences of the primary researcher as a transgender person and emerging clinician. This study utilized systematic expert review to examine the validity of this proposed instrument