Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: The primary objective of this scoping review is to examine the breadth of research that has been conducted on the mental health of LGBTQ+ K-12 students. Our examination will allow us to conceptualize the current body of literature into distinct but related themes, identify gaps in the literature and present implications for future research. While a variety of systematic reviews have been conducted regarding the mental health of LGBTQ+ students, all target specific and narrow concepts within the construct of mental health, or do not focus specifically on schools as a setting. For example, studies have examined the impact of school climate on the mental health of LGBTQ+ adolescents (Ancheta et al., 2021) or the role of schools on supporting LGBTQ+ youth experiencing suicidality (Marracchini et al., 2022). However, to our knowledge no form of knowledge synthesis has been conducted that attempts to paint a broader picture, zooming out to examine “what research is out there regarding LGBTQ+ student mental health?” both in our preliminary search on databases nor does there seem to be one currently in progress. Our study was constructed to align with the Population, Concept, Context (PCC) framework, which considers the population of interest (LGBTQ+ students in the U.S), the concept under investigation (mental health, defined using the dual factor model which concerns psychopathology and subjective well-being), and the context in which it occurs (K-12 U.S schools). We will be limiting our search to sources dated from January 1st, 1990, to April 1st, 2023, including articles published online ahead of print, and those available in English. We will be searching 9 total databases that were selected to provide an interdisciplinary pool of sources that also includes unpublished or gray literature. We will be adhering to the scoping review methods of the Johanna Briggs Institute’s manual for evidence synthesis (Peters et al., 2020a) and additional articles on best practices in protocol development, data analysis, and reporting in scoping reviews (Munn et al., 2018; Tricco et al., 2016; Peters et al., 2020b, Peters et al., 2022).