 My research looks at the experiences of queer and transgender people who access mental health support. So you might know queer and transgender people as those in rainbow communities or LGBTQ people. So there is a very large body of research that tells us that queer and trans people experience high levels of mental health difficulties, stigma and discrimination. So we know for example that 20% of secondary school students who identify as trans have attempted suicide in the last year compared to 5% of students in the general population. I think it's really important that we know what happens when this group goes into therapy and seeks support. So for my research I've been interviewing people about that and I've been finding that some people find it difficult to disclose aspects of their identity to the mental health professional for fear of that discrimination coming into the therapy room. I got in touch with people who are interested. I sent them some information about myself in the study. I asked them to choose a location that they would feel comfortable in. So lots of the interviews were done at university but also at central libraries or sometimes in the person's home if that was best for them. And we just kind of sat down for an hour, an hour and a half and had a conversation about their experience. I think that sometimes as mental health professionals we think of our therapy room as a safe space away from what's going on in the world. But what my participants are telling me is that they bring kind of the weight of the world into that situation. I'd come from that ground of doing a lot of statistics. So my participants had always been numbers on a screen to me rather than people with lives and stories. And so being able to form those connections with people was really amazing.