DENVER, Colorado — For the LGBTQ+ community, finding affordable, gender-affirming care can be difficult. It's even more complicated to find care covered by insurance.
At Metropolitan State University of Denver, people who identify as non-binary or transgender can receive free gender-affirming voice therapy. The free services are offered through the Speech Language Clinic.
It's both an opportunity for graduate clinicians who are in the process of receiving their degree in speech pathology, as well as those who want to receive the services.
"My main frustration with my voice coming in is definitely just feeling like it kind of outed me or was just another thing for people to use to misgender me," said Elliotte Enochs, who began voice therapy in September.
Enochs, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, was one of the first to start receiving the speech therapy when the program started about a year ago.
Over the course of the once-a-week sessions, Enochs has worked with graduate clinician Morgan Sanchez.
"We worked a lot on first just identifying what their goal was. I mean, we took a lot of time at the beginning just developing our understanding of voice and also what they wanted for their voice," Sanchez said. "So, that was our beginning."
The key change that worked best for Enochs was resonance, and by teaching Enochs how to change the position of their tongue to have a 'darker' sound with a deeper timbre to it.
During their sessions, Sanchez led Enochs through different voice work like breathing exercises, vocal stretches.
"It’s changed a lot, and my goal from the beginning was just to have more freedom over my voice," Enochs said.
"It just became really natural, which is really cool because it’s hard to learn a new thing," Sanchez said.
The clinic began doing gender-affirming speech therapy about a year ago. All of their services come at no cost to the client - a stark difference from most insurance policies, which only cover six sessions. The clinic also has a bilingual concentration in both English and Spanish.
"Your voice is a really complex thing," Director of Clinical Education for Speech Language Hearing Services Ilana Oliff said. "What we often see with folks who try to do this on their own is they damage their vocal cords, and they end up losing their voice or they are just not able to get to the place where their voice matches who they are."
The majority of the clients who receive gender-affirming voice therapy are referred through the Transgender Center of the Rockies.
"For these clients specifically, I think it’s just empowerment and being able to see them achieve what they want and to be able to go out and live in the community in a way that feels authentic and true to them. It’s just really empowering," Oliff said.
For Enochs, it took about 8 months for them, from start to finish, to feel like they were comfortable with their voice.
"There was just one session where they just did, and Elliotte was just doing it. And I was like, you know what Elliotte, I think that you are getting this and I think if you can continue to this consistently in the next few sessions, I think I have given you all that I can give," Sanchez said.
After utilizing the service, Enochs says that they have been recommending to their friends to join the waitlist.
"I think it is so important to bring light to how medically transitioning or medical transition in a more physical way doesn’t always look like hormones. It doesn’t always look like surgery," Enochs said. "It’s really important to emphasize that there are these options that are not permanent, that are not like expensive medical options."
As of now, there are more than 30 people on MSU Denver's waiting list for the clinic's services.
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