Vernon Rosario


Vernon A. Rosario II is an American psychiatrist and medical historian who studies human sexuality. His recent work has focused on transgender and intersex youth, and he has served as chair of the medical advisory board for Intersex Society of North America.

Life and career

Rosario earned undergraduate degrees in French literature and biomedical engineering from Brown University in 1986. He received his Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard University in 1993, and his M.D. from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1995. Rosario completed a residency and fellowship with the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute in 2002. Since then he has been in private practice and been a psychiatric consultant at Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services in Los Angeles. He has held a UCLA clinical teaching position since 2003, and is currently an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry.
Rosario has published in English, French, and Spanish, and his books include Science and Homosexualities and The Erotic Imagination: French Histories of Perversity. He has been a longtime activist in eliminating homophobia, and he has criticized author J. Michael Bailey’s stereotypic depiction of gay men in The Man Who Would Be Queen. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, one major focus has been helping young LGBT people come out to their families. Rosario has also expressed concern for excessive specialization in psychiatry, focusing on neuroscience while ignoring other factors.
As chair of the LGBT Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, he edited and published a web-based course on LGBT mental health.

Selected publications