Internalized transphobia, mental health and coping strategies among transgender

Abstract

The current study, aimed to explore, Internalized Transphobia, Mental health and coping strategies among Transgender. The data was obtained from 220 individuals from Activist Alliance Foundation, Multan. To assess internalized transphobia Transgender Identity Survey (Bocketing et al.2010) was used, for mental Health Symptom Checklist (Derogates et.al 1973) and for Coping Strategies Coping Style Scale (Zaman & Ali, 2015) was used. It was hypothesized that mental health issues will be positively related with internalized transphobia and coping strategies will be negatively related with mental health issue. Also a negative relationship between internalized transphobia and coping strategies was predicted among transgender. Also it was hypothesized that internalized transphobia will be high in early adulthood age group as compared to middle adulthood age group. Results revealed significant positive relationship between internalized transphobia and mental health issues among transgender. It was also revealed that mental health issues negatively correlated with emotion focused coping and Problem focused coping. A significant negative relationship between internalized transphobia and coping strategies (i.e. problem focused copying and emotion copying) was also found. The finding also revealed that there was no significant difference between the two age groups (early adulthood and Middle adulthood). Finally, the results revealed coping strategies were negatively related with mental health issues. Thus, it concluded that the Trans individuals who were high on internalized negativity had more mental issues and therefore less emotion focused and problem focused coping were used by them. The findings of the research have important implication in the field of psychology, to develop psychological programs for the minority group so that their mental health can be improved and future researches exploring the similar findings.