ChristianaCare launches Gender Wellness Program for transgender and gender diverse individuals.
The program provides psychotherapy and support services for people exploring their gender identity or people identifying as transgender looking for support in their medical and social transition.
It also provides treatment for behavioral health conditions such as anxiety and depression. This is important since the National Institutes of Health reports the suicide attempt rate is higher among transgender individuals.
"We also see that the improvement in any kind of mental health symptoms a person may have improves with gender affirming treatment,” said Herb.
That’s Gender Wellness Program manager Dr. Brett Herb, who says the program also provides referrals.
"We refer people to an OBGYN that's gender affirming who will provide hysterectomies, for example, to transmasculine individuals. We have primary care physicians that we refer to who will provide gender affirming hormones. So that's the other piece is that we do that,” said Herb. “We help people with changing their documents like people that need assistance with changing their driver’s license or birth certificate and their name and those kinds of things."
Herb notes it’s the entirety of the person the program is seeking to help.
The program follows the guidelines of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health - and offer individual, couples, family, and group therapy sessions.
For more information on the Gender Wellness Program you can email genderwellnessprogram@christianacare.org, or you can call 302-623-6773.
