This portfolio contains two separately produced pieces of work, both exploring issues which LGBTQ+ individuals face relating to mental health needs and experiences. Although the papers were written from different perspectives, a common thread running through both of the papers is that individuals’ experiences extend beyond their mental health difficulties and are shaped by a variety of relational and structural contexts.

Part A of the portfolio focuses on the difficulties faced by LGBTQ+ individuals seeking access to mental health services within the UK through a systematic review. Engagement with services is typically perceived as an individual-level issue but is actually reproduced within mental health services themselves through mechanisms of erasure, gatekeeping and stigma.

Part B turns to lived experience in an online qualitative survey investigating how participants with intersecting ethnic minority and sexual and/or gender minority identities experience belongingness to these two communities and how it impacts their mental health. This study illustrates the processes involved in creating a sense of belonging and the negotiations required with overlapping, multiple identities. Having a sense of belonging was often difficult to achieve and entailed considerable emotional labour, but participants reported actively creating and striving for greater recognition and feelings of belonging in certain areas.

In this portfolio, I aimed to reflect a commitment to understanding mental health within the LGBTQ+ community through a relational, intersectional and systemic lens as opposed to therapeutic models, often situating difficulties within the person. I also intended to explore how clinical psychology can understand and work with this community, and how practice can make sense of service users’ lived experiences while enabling access to support given their experiences of marginalisation and difficulty accessing mental health services.