Nanette K. Gartrell, MD : An Oral History

Nanette Gartrell, MD, is a psychiatrist, researcher, and writer who was a member of Stanford’s class of 1971. She began her research career in 1971 under the supervision of Keith Brodie, MD, then a Human Biology professor and later a president of Duke University. Dr. Gartrell’s first studies focused on psychiatrists’ attitudes toward lesbianism, and hormonal determinants of sexual orientation.
Dr. Gartrell graduated Stanford in 1972 in the first class of Human Biology majors. She attended medical school at U.C. Davis (1972-1976). In 1975, she organized the first American Psychiatric Association (APA) presentation on lesbianism as an alternative form of sexual expression. Dr. Gartrell completed her psychiatric residency at Harvard Medical School’s Massachusetts Mental Health Center in 1979. During residency, Dr. Gartrell was appointed an APA Falk Fellow to create a curriculum on the psychology of women and men. She also completed a fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital in 1979.
Dr. Gartrell was an Instructor and then Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School (1979-1987), and Director of Psychiatric Services at Beth Israel’s Healthcare Associates. She became the first out lesbian physician on the medical school full-time faculty. Her teaching, writing, and clinical work were devoted to promoting nonhomophobic healthcare for LGBT people and eliminating sexism in medicine. Among her many endeavors at Harvard, she: developed educational curricula and taught medical students, house officers, and faculty how to provide nonhomophobic treatment to LGBT patients; developed strategies to help closeted LGBT people come out to family, friends, and co-workers; served on the Joint Committee on the Status of Women; conducted research on such topics as psychiatric symptoms in medical students, medical student stress, increased libido in women taking trazodone, and women’s attitudes toward breast-conserving surgery.
Within the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Gartrell was appointed Assembly Deputy Minority Representative for Women (1980-1982), and Vice-Chair and then Chair of the Committee on Women (1980-1984).
In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. Gartrell was the principal investigator of groundbreaking investigations into sexual misconduct by physicians that led to new professional ethics codes and the criminalization of boundary violations. For this work, Gartrell was featured in the PBS Frontline documentary, “My Doctor, My Lover.”
Dr. Gartrell’s other scientific investigations have contributed to the ongoing struggle for LGBT civil rights. These studies focus primarily on sexual minority parent families. Dr. Gartrell is the principal investigator of the ongoing U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study that began in 1986 and still has a 92% retention rate as of 2019. Her publications have been cited internationally in litigation and legislation concerning equality in marriage, foster care, and adoption, and in numerous briefs filed with the US Supreme Court for the hearings on Proposition 8 and marriage equality. Discover Magazine honored Dr. Gartrell’s lesbian family research within its “100 Top Science Stories of 2010” edition.
From 1988-2011, Dr. Gartrell was Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF. Since 2009, she has been a Guest Appointee at the University of Amsterdam, and since 2010 a Visiting Distinguished Scholar at the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law.
Dr. Gartrell is married to psychiatrist and Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker Dee Mosbacher, MD, PhD. The two have been a couple since 1975, and they are the joint recipients of a Mathew O. Tobriner Public Service Award from the Legal Aid Society.

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Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program Interviews