Justin Richardson, MD

Dr. Richardson is director of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, a school-within-a-school of Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Department of Psychiatry offering over a dozen training programs in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and psychoanalytic education to students and clinicians at every stage of their professional development. Dr. Richardson has been a leading advocate of modern teaching techniques in psychoanalytic training and is a winner of the International Psychoanalytical Association's Psychoanalytic Training Today Award. Prior to assuming the directorship of Columbia Psychoanalytic in 2022, Dr. Richardson served as the Center's chair of training from 2017 to 2022.

Dr. Richardson received his AB in Biology from Harvard College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, his AM in Social Anthropology from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He trained in Harvard's Department of Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, where he was chief resident.

He came to Columbia in 1994 to found the Columbia Center for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Mental Health, the first university-affiliated center of its kind in the country, which he led until 2003. Advocacy for sexual minorities has been at the heart of his work for decades. Dr. Richardson has consulted to dozens of private and public schools around the country on the needs of queer youth. He is coauthor with Mark Schuster, MD, PhD, of the parenting book Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They'd Ask) (Crown, 2003), and has spoken about children and teens' sexual development in numerous media outlets, including on the Today show, Good Morning America, CNN, 20/20, and NPR's Morning Edition. In 2005 Dr. Richardson and his husband, playwright Peter Parnell, published the groundbreaking children's book, And Tango Makes Three (Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers). Embraced and challenged around the world, that book has led to Dr. Richardson and his husband's decades-long efforts to protect the freedom of expression in the US.

Dr. Richardson served as the psychiatric advisor to seasons two and three of the HBO series In Treatment. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Dalton School in Manhattan. He sees patients in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Greenwich Village.