Dominique Jackson, known for her leading role in the television series “Pose”, and Esmé Weijun Wang, author of “The Border of Paradise”, will speak to the Yale community at the Women’s Mental Health Conference .
Omar Ali
Staff reporter
Yale Daily News
Actress, author, and model Dominique Jackson and Whiting Award-winning writer Esmé Weijun Wang will speak to the Yale community at virtual and in-person events at the Women’s Mental Health Conference on May 28-29. april.
WMHC is the first-ever scholar and trainee-led conference focused on the field of women’s mental health. The event aims to bring together clinicians, researchers and advocates to share their knowledge with healthcare trainees, the greater New Haven community and, in recent years, a global audience.
The conference will feature people from diverse backgrounds – both inside and outside of academic and medical spaces – to highlight and discuss the mental health experiences of women from different communities.
“This year we have a panel focused on the impact of political and humanitarian crises on the mental health of women affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the US-Mexico border crisis” , Gul Saeed, a postdoctoral candidate at the School of Public Health, wrote to the News. “Our goal is for this conference to shed light on the critical need to prioritize women’s mental health and tailor mental health care to the needs of different communities.
Since the conference’s inception in 2019, the WMHC has expanded beyond the Yale and New Haven community, according to Maria Iuliano, the conference’s associate president. In addition to every state in the United States, WMHC has reached 52 countries through its virtual programming.
“It’s been amazing to connect with mental health advocates, researchers and interns around the world, and it’s empowering and exciting to hear from our line-up of speakers who are able to highlight topics often underestimated. studied, overlooked or downplayed on the pitch,” Iuliano said.
This year’s keynote, “Finding Gender Joy: A Conversation with Dominique Jackson,” will feature Jackson sharing her story as a transgender immigrant and discussing her own experiences with mental health. Christy Olezeski, director and co-founder of the Yale Pediatric Gender Program, also helped organize a special event for YPGP patients to meet Jackson outside of the conference.
Additionally, organizers invited Wang, an esteemed essayist and author, to discuss her New York Times bestseller “The Collected Schizophrenias,” in which she explores her diagnosis of schizophrenia, her experience with the chronic illness, the widespread effects ableism and the effect of art and spirituality on the psyche. Wang has already detailed his mental health issues while a student at Yalenoting how colleges and universities can fail in their approach to managing student mental health.
“We felt it was especially important to us that Esme Wang return to Yale for the first time since her experience here to reflect on the recent experiences of students in crisis here at Yale and to highlight the massive changes in mental health policy. implemented by Yale student. health earlier this year,” said Erin Davidowicz, WMHC president and third-year resident in the department of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.
Davidowicz added that Yale’s WMHC has always prioritized important conversations about LGBTQ+ mental health, especially transgender health care. By recognizing the connections between women’s mental health and LGBTQ+ health, she hopes that participants can organize all kinds of gender-sensitive care, both for women and for minority gender identities.
“The WMHC aims to facilitate discussion around LGBTQ+ and transgender mental health, and we find this discussion very timely, given the current social and political climate,” Iuliano said.
According to Angela Nunez, head of ProNET research at the School of Medicine, the conference aims to highlight all types of journeys in the mental health community, covering issues such as mental health history in the context of family traumas and living with diagnoses and chronic illnesses. Other topics discussed by speakers and presenters include creativity, the LGBTQ+ community, and immigration.
THE conference 2023 will be free and entirely virtual on Friday, April 28, with in-person events taking place at the University on Saturday, April 29.
