Interrogating Trans (in)visibility: A collective case study of school-based mental health provision and access for trans and gender-diverse youth in Ontario.
Abstract
This qualitative collective case study investigates the impacts of cissexism on the provision of and access to school-based mental health support for trans and gender diverse youth. The study draws on Trans Studies and Foucauldian analytic frameworks to examine how cissexism operates across mental health policy, research, and practice to constitute trans and gender-diverse youth as subjects within the field of school-based mental health. A conceptual framework of (in)visibility is utilized to account for the ways in which trans and gender-diverse youth are simultaneously made intelligible as a result of experiencing mental health stress and/or gender dysphoria, while their other mental health needs are obscured or just conflated with other comorbidities. Through employing mind mapping and interviews with both school-based mental health practitioners and trans/gender diverse students in schools, I examine the relationship between the production of knowledge within the field of school based mental health and how it informs practices of mental health support and impacts student access. Two forms of knowledge, institutional and community informed, emerged as important influences which shaped how practitioners identified and engaged with cissexism in their work. The accounts of trans and gender-diverse youth offer a much needed triangulated and trans desubjugated perspective on the administration of and access to mental health support which further exposes the extent of the institutionalization of cissexism in the school system and also documents their hopes for a school-based mental health system which meets their needs. The findings reveal the need for the integration of intersectional and decolonial frameworks in the school based mental health field which has implications for improving both pre- and in-service practitioner training. Overall, the study highlights the importance of recognizing the full range of mental health needs that trans and gender-diverse youth have beyond the limited discourses of gender dysphoria and minority stress which currently dominate the field.