Sunday, August 2, 2009

Sunstone Presentation

Maybe it will be impossible for me to retire...

Following is information from Ron Schow regarding a presentation at this year's Sunstone Symposium that is pertinent to this blog community. Please pass the information along to anyone that you think might be interested. Maybe I should send it to my Bishop. ;)

In January of this year Dr. Caitlin Ryan published the first article from her research in the prestigious journal, Pediatrics. Caitlin is a strong researcher and has received a number of awards and recognition from the American Library Assn., the American Psychological Assn., Smith College--where she was recently awarded the lifetime career award, and others. Her Pediatrics article reports data on the influence families have as they respond to their gay and lesbian children. When parents and other family and community members are accepting it has a profoundly positive effect as compared to when parents are rejecting. Caitlin has found a number of the most common accepting and rejecting behaviors. One example of accepting is that parents simply listen when their children trust them with information about their feelings as opposed to being too quick to reject the feelings. It is very instructive to consider how Caitlin's research might be applied within the religious community and by mental health professionals. Caitlin made contact with us because she is aware of the respect for academics and research in the LDS community and she feels we will be inclined to pay attention to the profound effect which parental/family/care giver response may have on their children. She is also aware of the strong emphasis on families in our LDS community.

Caitlin's findings show that when parents are rejecting to their gay and lesbian children the prevalence of suicide attempts of their children moves from about 22% to almost 80% as compared to when they are not at all rejecting. The influence on illegal drug use and risky sexual behavior also moves up in an alarming way. Her message is designed to help mental health and community leaders in responding better to the admission of same gender attractions. Caitlin is preparing a booklet with these findings for an LDS audience and LDS families. An awareness of these issues by Church members could help in a profound way to improve the lives of youth and families within the Church affected by this issue.

Caitlin will present on Tuesday night, 7 pm, Aug 11, at the S.L. City Library and Wednesday afternoon, 2 pm, Aug 12, at Sunstone at the Downtown Sheraton. She will also present Saturday late afternoon, 4:45 pm, Aug 15, at Sunstone.

The current Sunstone program can be found here https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/images//slc09prelimcorrected.pdf and Caitlin is doing session W-5 on Wednesday and session 375 on Sat. There are descriptions that will help as you describe to others what her presentations will be about. Her website is http://familyproject.sfsu.edu/overview

3 comments:

Frank Lee Scarlet said...

I'm glad people are recognizing how important it is to be accepting. I'm also glad to see that Serendipity isn't yet (fully) retired!
Love ya,
FLeeS

Eternity said...

It really made me feel sad to read that you were thinking of retiring from the blogging world. I always feel a neat spirit after I read your blog post and as I have said before you are a very special person. Don't forget that. As we talked about today in Sunday School we need to not worry about what the "natural man" says but more of what our Heavenly Father says and thinks. And from what I know about you I think I can say that he is very proud of you and the charity that you have for all of his children. You are a special lady with a special mission don't give up.

B.G. Christensen said...

Are you guys going to be at Sunstone? We'll be there on Saturay.