Caring for Transgender Patients, Body and Mind: A Q&A with Walter Bockting
September 24, 2015
Caring for Transgender Patients, Body and Mind: A Q&A with Walter Bockting
Faculty Profile: Walter Bockting, PhD, Professor of Medical Psychology (Psychiatry and Nursing); Co-Director, LGBT Health Initiative, CUMC; Research Scientist, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Division of Gender, Sexuality, and Health
Walter Bockting is one of the world’s leading researchers on transgender health. He is internationally known for his expertise in the assessment and treatment of gender dysphoria – the incongruence a person may feel between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity – and in the general mental health and psychosocial adjustment of transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming individuals and their families. He received his doctoral degree in psychology from the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and went on to become a tenured professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School before joining the faculty of Columbia University. In 2010-2011, he served on the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee of the National Academies whose work culminated in the IOM report “The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding.” This spring, Bockting was part of a task force that wrote practice guidelines for the American Psychological Association for working with transgender and gender nonconforming people. He has published numerous scientific articles and textbook chapters in the area of LGBT health. He is currently the principal investigator of Project AFFIRM, a multi-site longitudinal study of transgender identity development funded by the National Institutes of Health, the MAC AIDS Fund, and a number of other private foundations.