Our Mission
Meeting the needs of gender dysphoric youth is one of the most urgent and complex challenges facing the mental health field today. Therapy First’s mission is to raise the quality of care accessible to this population and to drive systemic improvements in the mental health field necessary to meet their needs.
We do this by training clinicians in keeping with the standard of care established by major mental health associations, whose guidelines support therapy first for this population, and resourcing them to provide mental health care that is developmentally appropriate, evidence-informed, and aligned with professional best practices.
Therapy First is a U.S. based nonprofit organization founded in 2021 in response to concerns that clinicians were not offering youth experiencing gender dysphoria adequate mental health care. The organization’s mission is to raise the quality of care accessible to this population and to drive systemic improvements within the mental health field necessary to meet their needs.
Our programming focuses on training clinicians in keeping with the standard of care established by major mental health associations, whose guidelines support therapy first for this population, and on supporting the delivery of developmentally appropriate, evidence-informed mental health care aligned with professional best practices.
Therapy First members regularly present at professional conferences and publish original research, and our work has been featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Therapy First is a registered 501c3 nonprofit. Contributions to Therapy First are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Therapy First’s tax identification number is 87-3936604.