The UMHS Comprehensive Gender Services Program (UMHS-CGSP) offers a range of specialty services to transitioning people. These services include:
- Mental Health Care
- Primary Medical Care
- Surgical Care
- Speech/Language Therapy
- Support Groups for Family and Friends
Our goal is to provide the transgender person and their family members with the information, care, and resources needed to make transition as comfortable and convenient as possible.
Mental Health Care
The program has a team of administrators and mental health professionals, including social workers, clinical psychologists, and master’s level counselors, some of whom are affiliates of the program. These team members have a special interest in and experience working with gender-variant and transgender individuals.
Once a patient has completed the enrollment process, they will be referred to one of the CGSP or affiliated mental health providers, if needed. The CGSP Team will work with your mental health provider, as appropriate, to assist you as you move forward toward your goals. We will assess where you are in your process, and determine how we may be able to help facilitate your transition.
Our therapists may also serve as second-opinion providers for referral letters for medical interventions, in some cases.
Primary Care
The UMHS-CGSP provides primary medical care to gender-variant and transgender patients in a welcoming and affirming environment. Services include:
- Health education
- Health risk assessment
- Care of chronic conditions (such as hypertension or diabetes)
- Gynecology
- Dermatology
- Pre- and post- operative medical and sexual care
If referrals to specialty providers are needed, patients will be referred to physicians familiar with the needs of gender-variant individuals.
Speech Language Therapy
The special problem of achieving gender appropriate speech and voice is a concern of great importance to many transgendered individuals. As is the case with any person, when speech interferes with one's attempts to effectively communicate, or when the quality of one's speech or voice calls negative attention to the speaker, then speech and language therapy may be warranted.
With gender-variant patients, the goals of Speech Language Therapy include:
- Voice modification (e.g. pitch, intonation, quality)
- Speech/articulation (e.g. manner of speech sound production)
- Language (e.g. vocabulary usage)
- Non-verbal communication (e.g. conversational style, social skills, body language, gesture, facial expression)
Participation in Speech Therapy begins with an initial evaluation, during which each client's individual speech/voice goals are established. Follow-up individual sessions are aimed at helping clients to learn the specific techniques needed to meet their objectives. Depending on enrollment, scheduling, and client needs, group sessions may also be available to clients. Group therapy goals would typically focus on practice, carryover and generalization of newly learned verbal and non-verbal skills, as well as to provide opportunities for social skills exploration, role-playing, and peer support and feedback.
You may contact us by calling 734-998-2150 or by emailing [email protected]