Medical muddle

Nanette Gartrell, MD, is a psychiatrist and researcher whose investigations have documented the mental health and psychological well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people over the past four decades. Nanette is the principal investigator of an ongoing longitudinal study of lesbian families in which the children were conceived by donor insemination. Now in its 27th year, this project has been cited internationally in the debates over equality in marriage, foster care, and adoption. Previously on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Francisco, Nanette is currently a Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law. In 2013, Nanette received the Association of Women Psychiatrists Presidential Commendation Award for "selfless and enduring vision, leadership, wisdom, and mentorship in the fields of women's mental health, ethics, and gender research." At the age of 63, Nanette experienced a 3 ½ month period of intractable, incapacitating dizziness for which there was never a clear diagnosis.