Reimagining Prevention Science: LGBTQ+ Collective Action to Prevent Depression and Anxiety in Urban Vietnam

This project investigates how LGBTQ+ communities in the Global South are forging new forms of care and activism amid high rates of depression, anxiety, and exclusion from both public health systems and heteronormative society. Existing interventions—individualised, clinical, and Global North-derived—are often inadequate in the face of structural discrimination. I ask: can community-led collective action prevent depression and anxiety among LGBTQ+ people? Focusing on LGBTQ+ networks in urban Vietnam—one of the most dynamic sites of queer solidarity in the Global South—I reimagine collective action as a pathway to mental health. I define it as 'voluntary group efforts to support mutual well-being and respond to structural discrimination.' I will (1) theorise how LGBTQ+ collective action emerges, unfolds, and shapes mental health through a grounded theory study, (2) model reciprocal dynamics between collective action and depression/anxiety using an observational cohort, and (3) co-adapt and evaluate a promising collective action-based intervention through participatory and realist methods. Bridging the social and health sciences, this project integrates qualitative and quantitative approaches into a unified, three-stage pipeline. It sheds light on a neglected field—LGBTQ+ mental health in the Global South—and offers a new blueprint for prevention science, centring empowerment and structural transformation where traditional systems have failed.