Risk and Resilience Explored for Sexual Minorities in England: Qualitative Findings.

The ‘Risk and Resilience Explored’ (RaRE) study is an example of collaborative community-based research being led by a charity – PACE Health which promotes the health and wellbeing of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people - in cooperation with academic partners. It is the first British study to explore LGBT mental health-related risk concomitantly with resilience. RaRE, funded by the Big Lottery, is a mixed-method study exploring specific mental health issues found to be more prevalent among LGBT people. These issues are attempted suicide among LGBT youth; alcohol problems among lesbian and bisexual women; and body image disorders among gay and bisexual men. In this talk we discuss findings from the first phase qualitative interviews. Thirty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with LGB or T individuals who had past experience of one or more of these issues. These data were thematically analysed and our analysis focuses on the conceptual organisation of both risk of these mental health issues and resilience to these difficulties at individual, relational and broader societal ‘levels’. In conclusion, we highlight the value of applied LGBT research for qualitative psychology and in terms of the benefit for sexual minority groups.