JQT AFFIRMING CARE: A TOOLKIT FOR MENTAL HEALTH PROVIDERS

We’re excited and proud to release our JQT Affirming Care: A Toolkit for Mental Health Providers. You, our community, asked for this resource - a resource to provide to mental health care providers in order to lessen the burden of educating others on the experiences and challenges facing LGBTQ2SIA+ Jews. This resource is part of our JQT Mental Health Support Series, a series we launched in partnership with Jewish Family Services Vancouver. Our Board worked with care providers to provide the JQT Mental Health Support Series and to produce this resource. We also asked for community and care provider feedback on our initial draft of this document and some of you generously provided thoughtful and detailed review and comment, much of which has been incorporated in this final version.

We acknowledge and affirm what a difficult time this is for JQTs. Many of us are experiencing deep grief, anger, isolation, and fear among other things and need mental health support that is (1) accessible and (2) knowledgeable about the JQT experience. We hope this resource, combined with our broader JQT Mental Health Support Series can help meet those needs.

We also want to be open with our community that the JQT Affirming Care Toolkit includes information on topics that are difficult to discuss at this moment in time, let alone produce a resource for. We recognize it may not align perfectly with your personal feelings and experiences. It may not include all of the information or the types of information you’d like to see. It may not resonate with you at all. It is yours to use or not use however you see fit. It is also meant to be a starting point, to bring awareness to topics some mental health care providers may not even be aware of. It is, by no means, a comprehensive resource and instead we hope it serves as a jumping-off point for mental health providers to do their own research and to talk with their clients, if appropriate.

Lastly, thank you to JFS Vancouver for their support of our Mental Health Support Series, to the toolkit’s co-authors Hannah Zalmanowitz and Anat Kelerstein, to those who took the time and effort to provide feedback and additional resources for consideration, and to you, the JQT community for being open with your needs and concerns and for guiding all of the work we do.

You can view the report by flipping through the pages of the report directly on this site or click here to view a PDF version of the report.