The Women's Mental Health Conference at Yale

17/04/2026

15/04/2026

Corvus Care Collective is a research, training, and policy initiative with the mission to increase access to research-supported, trauma-informed tools and approaches for providers seeking to deliver equitable, culturally humble, trauma-informed care and in-turn, prevent further traumatization for care recipients.

This informative session shares the mission of Corvus Care Collective with attendees along with the introduction of techniques for providing care that prevents and reduces re-traumatization for care recipients. Trauma-informed approaches can increase protective factors that can have both short- and long-term benefits for both patient and provider, including establishing and strengthening trust and safety in the patient/provider relationship and protecting one’s mental, physical, emotional, and psychological wellness.

In this session, attendees will hear from each of the four founding members of Corvus Care Collective as they present their individual work and research in service of promoting a culture of care and increasing patient power especially for people living with trauma. Ebony Williams will speak about the work of Cactus In Bloom and the importance of improving care for survivors of sexual violence from family planning throughout parenting in order to increase healthy mental health outcomes and to disrupt intergenerational child sexual abuse. Martine Geary-Souza will introduce their research and guidance on trauma-informed pelvic health care. Bex Macfife will introduce a sociological technique for contextualizing patient-provider interactions within the larger context of biomedicine. Sonja Castañeda-Cudney will introduce the Reproductive Psychiatric Advanced Directive, an advanced planning tool designed for pregnant and birthing people with severe mental health diagnoses that promotes the autonomy of all birthing people.

15/04/2026

The Reproductive Psychiatric Advance Directive (ReproPAD) was created in 2023 by an interdisciplinary team that included people with lived experience along with experts in the fields of reproductive psychiatry, a maternal fetal medicine, mental health law, legal advocacy, mental health advocacy, mental health policy, and students of medicine and law. It was originally designed for people with SMI diagnosis who can become pregnant.

Sonja Castañeda-Cudney will introduce the tool, demonstrate the importance of advance planning for all people who can become pregnant and experience a mental health challenge, and discuss how the ReproPAD provides a pathway for autonomy in decision-making throughout the perinatal period for a person’s reproductive and mental health.

This session will go over the scale of the population of both birthing people with SMI and people who can become pregnant and experience a mental health challenge in the U.S., and the risks to birthing person, child, and family unit when this population can not access adequate or appropriate care. Attendees will be presented with common barriers to care along with some evidence-based best practices for this population. The ReproPAD will be shared as a tool for care providers and care recipients to create an advanced plan that incorporates an individual’s reproductive and mental health care preferences. Sonja will walk attendees through the ReproPAD template sections and discuss scenarios for tool application.

15/04/2026

Western healthcare systems have historically framed women’s and gender-diverse people’s health primarily through a reproductive lens, centering fertility, pregnancy, and childbearing while often minimizing broader physiological, psychological, relational, and identity-based dimensions of well-being. This narrow framing contributes to delayed diagnosis, dismissal of symptoms, inadequate hormonal and menstrual assessment, and clinical practices that prioritize the fetus or infant over the health of the birthing person, particularly during the perinatal and postpartum periods.

This session introduces a decolonizing, biopsychosocial, and gender-affirming framework for conceptualizing women’s and gender-diverse health across the lifespan. Participants will explore how colonial, patriarchal, and biomedical paradigms shape clinical assumptions such as “return when you want to get pregnant” or “it is okay not to menstruate” and learn practical strategies for integrating menstrual, hormonal, sexual, and reproductive health screening into mental health assessment and treatment. The presentation emphasizes centering the whole person, not solely reproductive capacity, and recognizing theprofound psychological shifts in identity, confidence, and sense of self that may occur during pregnancy, postpartum, and beyond.

15/04/2026

Featuring Andrea Ciarlelli LMFT, COO and Chief Clinical Officer, and representatives from a multidisciplinary team of eating disorder specialists.

Eating disorders remain among the most lethal—and most misunderstood—psychiatric illnesses. Despite decades of research, care systems continue to miss, misdiagnose, and marginalize large swaths of patients: boys and men, people in larger bodies, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, neurodivergent patients, and those with diagnoses such as OSFED, BED, ARFID, and atypical anorexia.

This 45-minute multidisciplinary conversation brings together a psychologist, physician, dietitian, therapist, family therapist, and coach—alongside a former patient with lived experience of atypical anorexia—to examine where and why our systems fail. Panelists will explore diagnostic blind spots, barriers to access, stigma and marginalization, payor and parity challenges, and the chronic underfunding of eating disorder care.

Together, we will examine how fragmented models perpetuate harm—and how truly integrated, multidisciplinary treatment can change outcomes. By centering both clinical expertise and lived experience, this panel invites a candid, solutions-oriented dialogue about what it will take to build a more accurate, equitable, and humane future for eating disorder treatment.

15/04/2026

Featuring Kelsey Riesbeck, Director of Dietary Services, and representatives from a multidisciplinary team of eating disorder specialists. 

Eating disorders remain among the most lethal—and most misunderstood—psychiatric illnesses. Despite decades of research, care systems continue to miss, misdiagnose, and marginalize large swaths of patients: boys and men, people in larger bodies, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, neurodivergent patients, and those with diagnoses such as OSFED, BED, ARFID, and atypical anorexia.

This 45-minute multidisciplinary conversation brings together a psychologist, physician, dietitian, therapist, family therapist, and coach—alongside a former patient with lived experience of atypical anorexia—to examine where and why our systems fail. Panelists will explore diagnostic blind spots, barriers to access, stigma and marginalization, payor and parity challenges, and the chronic underfunding of eating disorder care.
Together, we will examine how fragmented models perpetuate harm—and how truly integrated, multidisciplinary treatment can change outcomes. By centering both clinical expertise and lived experience, this panel invites a candid, solutions-oriented dialogue about what it will take to build a more accurate, equitable, and humane future for eating disorder treatment.

15/04/2026

Featuring Briana Rogers, LPC/LMHC and representatives from a multidisciplinary team of eating disorder specialists. 

Eating disorders remain among the most lethal—and most misunderstood—psychiatric illnesses. Despite decades of research, care systems continue to miss, misdiagnose, and marginalize large swaths of patients: boys and men, people in larger bodies, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, neurodivergent patients, and those with diagnoses such as OSFED, BED, ARFID, and atypical anorexia.

This 45-minute multidisciplinary conversation brings together a psychologist, physician, dietitian, therapist, family therapist, and coach—alongside a former patient with lived experience of atypical anorexia—to examine where and why our systems fail. Panelists will explore diagnostic blind spots, barriers to access, stigma and marginalization, payor and parity challenges, and the chronic underfunding of eating disorder care.
Together, we will examine how fragmented models perpetuate harm—and how truly integrated, multidisciplinary treatment can change outcomes. By centering both clinical expertise and lived experience, this panel invites a candid, solutions-oriented dialogue about what it will take to build a more accurate, equitable, and humane future for eating disorder treatment.

10/04/2026

Burnout in high-achieving women is not just about work-life balance, it’s a deeper biological and systemic issue. Many continue performing at a high level while experiencing chronic stress and symptoms that often go unrecognized. Dr. Tracy Latz addresses that it requires more than self-care, focusing instead on nervous system regulation, identity shifts, and structural change.