The 2023 Women’s Mental Health Conference (WMHC) at Yale will be held this year on April 28 and 29 and will feature virtual keynote speaker Dominique Jackson, actress, author, and advocate for trans mental health, and a hybrid (in-person/virtual) fireside chat and book signing with Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias.
WMHC is the first academic and trainee-led conference on women’s mental health, and has had exponential growth over the past few years, reaching attendees in more than 32 countries and in more than 40 U.S. states.
The volunteer organizing committee is comprised of resident physicians, graduate students, and advocates from across the world. The conference is led by co-chairs Erin Davidowicz, MD, a current third-year psychiatry resident at Yale’s Department of Psychiatry, and Varuna Srinivasan, MBBS, MPH, a community sexual health educator, whom have been the chairs since 2021. The assistant chair is Maria Iuliano, a PhD candidate in neuroscience, and the conference advisors are faculty members of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale.
The conference was founded in 2018 by former Yale Psychiatry residents Sofia Noori, MD, and Stefanie Gillson, MD.
“We’re so excited about how much this conference has grown and how many people it has reached," Davidowicz said. "These topics resonate with so many people - physicians, scientists, providers, community members, advocates - because the field is so vast, affects so many, and encompasses such vital medicine and much-needed discourse. We’re finally seeing a push. It’s never been at the forefront.”
The conference will be held virtually all day on April 28 and in-person on April 29 (with an option of virtual live-streaming). The virtual keynote lecture, “Finding Gender Joy: A Conversation with Dominique Jackson,” will also serve as the Yale Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds on April 28 at 10:15 am. The moderator will be Christy Olezeski, PhD, director and co-founder of the Yale Pediatric Gender Program (YPGP).
In addition to the keynote, the virtual conference will include four panels and 20 session presentations on various topics, including Obstetric Violence, post-partum OCD and psychosis, medication use in pregnancy, incarceration and women’s mental health, breastfeeding and maternal mental health, LGBTQ+ community-building, domestic violence, PMDD, restorative justice, and the impact of humanitarian crises on women. A full list of sessions, including times and speakers, may be found here.
The in-person event on April 29 is a fireside chat with Esmé Weijun Wang titled: “In Conversation with Esmé Weijun Wang: Mental Health, Ableism, and Spirituality” where Wang will discuss her work and do a book-signing for "The Collected Schizophrenias" (physical copies of the book come with registration for the in-person fireside chat). Wang’s talk will also be live-streamed virtually for free for all registrants.
The fireside chat is at 10:30 am on April 29 in New Haven. This will be followed by the opportunity to attend an in-person research networking session and luncheon highlighting trainee-led research and community organizations will be held at 1:30 pm in New Haven. A networking event with conference attendees, trainees, students, faculty, and practitioners from Yale, New Haven, and surrounding areas will begin at 2:30 pm.
The conference is open to the public and is free to attend, as this continues to ensure the conference is accessible for all. Please click here to register.