This section is about academic and clinical psychiatry, a medical speciality for doctors who can prescribe medications and perform medical procedures. They believe mood, behavior, cognition, and perceptions can be disordered or diseased, and they seek to treat those.
There is also a section on academic and clinical psychology.
For transition information please visit therapists specializing in gender issues.
Overview
Many people in our community have been helped by psychiatrists who worked with them to determine the best course of action for their unique transition needs. Psychiatry has also been used as a way to control and even harm our community, especially via disease models of gender identity and expression. One of the most controversial publications in psychiatry is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is published by the American Psychiatric Association.
At its worst, psychiatry has been misused in the academic exploitation of our community.
Psychiatrists who are transgender
- Nathaniel Sharon
- Alexis Chávez
Psychiatrists covered here
- John Bancroft
- former Kinsey Institute director, performed electroshock “therapy” on our community
- Susan Bradley
- Clarke Institute employee and prominent promoter of reparative therapy for our children
- Collette Chiland
- promoted gatekeeping and disease models
- Peter Collins
- Clarke Institute employee who co-created the disease “gynandromorphophilia“
- J. Paul Fedoroff
- Clarke Institute employee who studies “paraphilic sexual disorders”
- Kurt Freund
- Clarke Institute employee who developed the penile plethysmograph
- Richard Green
- founded Archives of Sexual Behavior, journal dedicated to “the prevention of transsexualism”
- Stephen B. Levine
- wrote pathologizing textbook
- Scott Leibowitz
- pediatric psychiatrist
- Isaac Marks
- performed electroshock “therapy” on our community
- Paul McHugh
- former Johns Hopkins employee and world-renowned critic of transgender people
- Jon K. Meyer,
- former Johns Hopkins employee, proposed closing Johns Hopkins gender clinic in 1979
- Walter J. Meyer III
- former head of WPATH
- Richard Pillard
- sought genetic markers for sexual orientation
- Richard R. Pleak
- advocate for affirmative models of care for youth
- Vernon Rosario
- advocate for affirmative models of care for youth
- Alan Sanders
- sought genetic markers for sexual orientation
- Chester W. Schmidt, Jr.
- another Johns Hopkins gatekeeper
- Ralph S. Smith, Jr.
- critical of youth health services, advisory board for ReIME
- Betty Steiner
- founded Clarke Institute gender clinic
- Thomas Szasz
- leader of anti-psychiatry movement and critic of trans diagnoses
- Jack Turban
- advocate for affirmative models of care for youth
- Thomas Wise
- Johns Hopkins gatekeeper who promoted pathologizing views of gender identity
Resources
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (aacap.org)
American Psychiatric Association (psychiatry.org)
- What is Gender Dysphoria?
- Jack Drescher, M.D.
- Jack Pula, M.D.
- Eric J. Yarbrough, M.D.