John Pachankis, whose research studies the mechanisms explaining the sexual orientation disparity in mental health and examines the efficacy of LGBTQ-affirmative mental health interventions, was recently appointed the David R. Kessler, M.D. ’55 Professor of Public Health, effective immediately.
Pachankis, a faculty member at the Yale School of Public Health, also has secondary appointments in the Department of Psychology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.
He is also director of Yale’s LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative, which provides a home for scholars and scholarship devoted to understanding and improving the mental health of LGBTQ populations in the U.S. and around the world.
The David R. Kessler, M.D. Professorship was created to support teaching and research on improving LGBTQ mental health.
Pachankis’s research program first seeks to identify the developmental precursors and biopsychosocial mechanisms of LGBTQ people’s disproportionate mental health burden, and then also engage these mechanisms as treatment targets. His lab uses epidemiological, experimental, and clinical trials methods to identify targeted ways to improve LGBTQ people’s mental health. The mental health treatments that his lab has developed and tested have been implemented in community settings across the United States.
These treatments have shown efficacy for reducing the co-occurring mental health risks commonly affecting LGBTQ people (including depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders) across several randomized controlled trials.
Pachankis has published more than 200 scientific papers on LGBTQ mental health and stigma and co-edited the “Handbook of Evidence-Based Mental Health Practice with Sexual and Gender Minorities” published by Oxford University Press.
His research has influenced policy and been featured in international media. And he has received numerous awards and honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship to Sweden in 2022-23 and a Distinguished Book Award from the American Psychological Association in 2019. The Yale LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative was recently honored with the prestigious 2024 Emery Award by the Hetrick-Martin Institute.
Pachankis earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and his B.A. in psychology at Loyola University in New Orleans.