Dr. Gail Wyatt
Dr. Gail E. Wyatt, a Clinical Psychologist, is a board-certified Sex Therapist and Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior at UCLA. She directs the Center for Culture, Trauma and Mental Health Disparities and the Sexual Health Programs. Dr. Wyatt has published well over 250 publications, written six books, and has provided Congressional testimony 10 times. “Stolen Women: Reclaiming our Sexuality, Taking Back our Lives” by Wiley and Sons, is a best-seller that details the effects of slavery and oppression on African American women today. Dr. Wyatt guest-edited the May 2017 issue of Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Policy, and Planning, including research conducted by first-authored South Africans of color. She and her team just completed an implementation study of the culturally congruent, CDC endorsed Eban Intervention for HIV serodiscordant couples. The intervention has been successfully adapted for South African couples. She and Dr. Harolyn Belcher co-edited a special issue on mentoring students of diverse backgrounds in the 2019 issue of the Journal of Orthopsychiatry.
Dr. Wyatt and her team also have one NIDA-funded domestic and two NIH training grants that include implementation science. Her multidisciplinary team is currently using the UCLA Life Adversities Screener to implement ‘’Healing our Hearts, Minds and Bodies”, funded by NHLBI to reduce cardiovascular and trauma risks for HIV-positive people of color. Other projects include a Gilead Science-funded intervention for HIV-negative women of color and a Cal Wellness Foundation-funded women-centered intervention to reduce HIV, STI, and reproductive health risks for women of color in Los Angeles County. In 2016, she received the Chancellor’s Award for Diversity and Inclusion. In 2017, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Psychological Association for her work on the effects of trauma on mental health. In 2019 she was made an Honorary Professor at the University of Capetown, South Africa for research and mentoring and she guest-edited a special issue on African American women and HIV, in Ethnicity and Disease in 2020.
She is now a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She has been married to Dr. Lewis Wyatt for 55 years, has a son, two granddaughters, and a daughter who is an angel.