Susan Bradley

Last updated
Susan Jane Bradley
Born1940 (age 83–84)
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Alma mater University of Toronto (BS, MD)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto

Susan Jane Bradley (born 1940) is a Canadian psychiatrist. She has written many journal articles and books, including Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents (with Kenneth Zucker) and Affect Regulation and the Development of Psychopathology. Bradley was chair of the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Disorders. [1]

Contents

Bradley served as Head of the Division of Child Psychiatry and was Psychiatrist-in-Chief at the Hospital for Sick Children and was consultant psychiatrist at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. She is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychiatry at University of Toronto and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Personal

Bradley was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario. She attended University of Toronto, earning a Bachelor of Science in 1962 and an Doctor of Medicine in 1966. Prior to starting medical school, she worked for a year in India with CUSO. [2]

Career

Bradley was certified in medicine in 1967. She earned her specialty licenses in psychiatry and child psychiatry in 1972. In the late 1970s, Bradley founded the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry.

Early models for treating gender-variant children involved attempts to change their gender identity and behavior to conform to social expectations for their assigned gender at birth (AGAB). [3] This approach became best known through the work of Susan Bradley and Kenneth Zucker, and through their colleagues at CAMH in Toronto, where it became known as the "living in your own skin" approach. [3]

In the 1990s, many clinics began to view being transgender as a type of normal human variation. [4] However, Bradley and Zucker continued to believe that preventing children from becoming transgender adults was an appropriate and ethical clinical goal. [4]

In collaboration with her co-author Kenneth Zucker, Bradley saw over 400 cases of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria and related issues. Bradley served the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. [1]

In 2015, Bradley argued that gender dysphoria in children is sometimes rooted in serious family problems, underlying anxiety disorders or psychological trauma and might need other treatment than change of gender. [5]

Selected publications

According to the Web of Science Bradley has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals. These articles and her books have been cited over 700 times, giving her an h-index of 16

Related Research Articles

Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identity—their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth. The term replaced the previous diagnostic label of gender identity disorder (GID) in 2013 with the release of the diagnostic manual DSM-5. The condition was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the individual's gender identity. Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity, but this is not always the case. While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. The term gender identity was coined by psychiatry professor Robert J. Stoller in 1964 and popularized by psychologist John Money.

Transvestic fetishism is a psychiatric diagnosis applied to men who are thought to have an excessive sexual or erotic interest in cross-dressing; this interest is often expressed in autoerotic behavior. It differs from cross-dressing for entertainment or other purposes that do not involve sexual arousal. Under the name transvestic disorder, it is categorized as a paraphilia in the DSM-5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Green (sexologist)</span> American psychiatrist and sexologist (1936–2019)

Richard Green was an American-British sexologist, psychiatrist, lawyer, and author known for his research on homosexuality and transsexualism, specifically gender identity disorder in children. He is known for his behaviorism experiment in which he attempted to prevent male homosexuality and transsexuality by extinguishing feminine behavior in young boys. He later came to favor biological explanations for male homosexuality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ray Blanchard</span> American-Canadian sexologist (born 1945)

Ray Milton Blanchard is an American-Canadian sexologist who researches pedophilia, sexual orientation and gender identity. He has found that men with more older brothers are more likely to be gay than men with fewer older brothers, a phenomenon he attributes to the reaction of the mother's immune system to male fetuses. Blanchard has also published research studies on phallometry and several paraphilias, including autoerotic asphyxia. Blanchard also proposed a typology of transsexualism.

Gender dysphoria in children (GD), also known as gender incongruence of childhood, is a formal diagnosis for children who experience significant discontent due to a mismatch between their assigned sex and gender identity. The diagnostic label gender identity disorder in children (GIDC) was used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until it was renamed gender dysphoria in children in 2013 with the release of the DSM-5. The diagnosis was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.

The American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard proposed a psychological typology of gender dysphoria, transsexualism, and fetishistic transvestism in a series of academic papers through the 1980s and 1990s. Building on the work of earlier researchers, including his colleague Kurt Freund, Blanchard categorized trans women into two groups: homosexual transsexuals who are attracted exclusively to men and are feminine in both behavior and appearance; and autogynephilic transsexuals who experience sexual arousal at the idea of having a female body. Blanchard and his supporters argue that the typology explains differences between the two groups in childhood gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, history of sexual fetishism, and age of transition.

Childhood gender nonconformity (CGN) is a phenomenon in which prepubescent children do not conform to expected gender-related sociological or psychological patterns, or identify with the opposite sex/gender. Typical behavior among those who exhibit the phenomenon includes but is not limited to a propensity to cross-dress, refusal to take part in activities conventionally thought suitable for the gender and the exclusive choice of play-mates of the opposite sex.

Child and adolescent psychiatry is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders in children, adolescents, and their families. It investigates the biopsychosocial factors that influence the development and course of psychiatric disorders and treatment responses to various interventions. Child and adolescent psychiatrists primarily use psychotherapy and/or medication to treat mental disorders in the pediatric population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DSM-5</span> 2013 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), is the 2013 update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the taxonomic and diagnostic tool published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). In 2022, a revised version (DSM-5-TR) was published. In the United States, the DSM serves as the principal authority for psychiatric diagnoses. Treatment recommendations, as well as payment by health care providers, are often determined by DSM classifications, so the appearance of a new version has practical importance. However, not all providers rely on the DSM-5 for planning treatment as the ICD's mental disorder diagnoses are used around the world and scientific studies often measure changes in symptom scale scores rather than changes in DSM-5 criteria to determine the real-world effects of mental health interventions. The DSM-5 is the only DSM to use an Arabic numeral instead of a Roman numeral in its title, as well as the only living document version of a DSM.

Kenneth J. Zucker is an American-Canadian psychologist and sexologist. He was named editor-in-chief of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2001. He was psychologist-in-chief at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and head of its Gender Identity Service until December 2015. Zucker is a professor in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Toronto.

Jack Drescher is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for his work on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Susan W. Coates is an American psychoanalyst, who has worked on gender dysphoria in children and early childhood trauma.

Ira Basil Pauly is an American psychiatrist who was an All American college football player at UCLA, and is known for his influential work on transsexualism.

Stephen Barrett Levine is an American psychiatrist known for his work in human sexuality, particularly sexual dysfunction and transsexualism.

Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg is a German-born psychologist best known for his work on biology of sexual orientation, gender identity, intersexuality, and HIV.

Diane Sharon Fordney is an American physician and sex therapist best known for her work on sexual function and dysfunction. She has also published professionally as Diane S. Fordney-Settlage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lee Robins</span> American professor

Lee Nelken Robins was an American professor of social science in psychiatry and a leader in psychiatric epidemiology research. She was affiliated with the Washington University in St. Louis for more than 50 years from 1954 until 2007.

Betty Wilson Steiner-Conduit was a Canadian psychiatrist. Steiner was the first head of the Gender Identity Clinic at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. She is known for her work with transgender and intersex people.

Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) beginning with the first edition, published in 1952 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). This classification was challenged by gay rights activists during the gay liberation following the 1969 Stonewall riots, and in December 1973, the APA board of trustees voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. In 1974, the DSM was updated and homosexuality was replaced with a new diagnostic code for individuals distressed by their homosexuality, termed ego-dystonic sexual orientation. Distress over one's sexual orientation remained in the manual, under different names, until the DSM-5 in 2013.

References

  1. 1 2 Bradley SJ, Blanchard R, Coates SW, Green R, Levine SB, Meyer-Bahlburg HFL, Pauly IB, Zucker KJ (1991). Interim report of the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. Archives of Sexual Behavior Volume 20, Number 4 / August, 1991
  2. ↑ Bradley, S. (2010). "Interview with Dr. Susan Bradley. Interview by Normand Carrey". Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 19 (1): 51–53. PMC   2809448 . PMID   20119569.
  3. 1 2 Chung, Kathleen; Rhoads, Sarah; Rolin, Alicia; Sackett-Taylor, Andrew C.; Forcier, Michelle (2020). "Treatment Paradigms for Prepubertal Children". In Forcier, Michelle; Van Schalkwyk, Gerrit; Turban, Jack L. (eds.). Pediatric Gender Identity: Gender-affirming Care for Transgender & Gender Diverse Youth. Springer. p. 177. ISBN   978-3030389086.
  4. 1 2 Ashley, Florence (2022). Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. pp. 4–6. ISBN   978-0774866958.
  5. ↑ Margaret Wente (8 May 2015) The raging battle over transgender kids The Globe and Mail . Archive
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