Christina Richards Psychology

Professor Dr Christina Richards BSc (Hons), MSc, DCPsych, CPsychol, EuroPsy, FBPsS is an HCPC Registered Doctor of Applied Psychology and a full Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS) where she is the Past Chair of the Division of Counselling Psychology (DCoP); Lead National Assessor for Counselling Psychology; Chair of the revision Committee of the BPS Assessment, Diagnosis and Formulation guidelines. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Counselling Psychology; Practice Lead of the Division; Prescribing Committee member; and Chair of the revision committee of the BPS Guidelines for working therapeutically with sexual, gender, and relationship diverse clients of which she was an original co-author; as well as several other roles.

Professor Richards is Visiting Full Professor of DPsych at Regent’s University London School of Psychotherapy and Psychology; Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield; and is the Clinical Module Lead for the Royal College of Physicians’ intercollegiate qualification in Gender Identity Healthcare.

Prof. Richards is Lead Consultant Psychologist/Head of Psychology at the London Gender Identity Clinic (Charing Cross) within the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. This role involves strategic planning and management on a national and international level; supervising senior staff; assessing people with highly complex needs for hormones and surgeries, and supervision of individual and group therapies from a number of different modalities.

Prof. Richards is also Head of Research at the NHS London Gender Identity Clinic (Charing Cross) within the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. This role involves responsibility for the strategy and implementation of the research programme at the clinic. Professor Richards also lectures and publishes internationally on gender, sexualities, and critical mental health – both within clinical academia and also to third sector and statutory bodies.

Prof. Richards was elected to the Executive Board of the European Professional Association for Transgender Health (EPATH); and is a current Board-Member-at-Large of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Prior to becoming a board member herself, she was selected by the executive board of the WPATH to be Lead Chapter Author for Adult Assessment in the Standards of Care Version 8 (SoC v8) revision. She is listed as an expert in gender diversity by the BPS on the Gender Diversity Specialist Register (whose criteria she co-drafted). She is one of the few psychologists recognised by HM Courts and Tribunals Service as a Specialist in the field of Gender Dysphoria, thus allowing her to prepare medical reports for the Gender Recognition Panel.

Prof. Richards is a founder member of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists (BAGIS); a past Trustee of the National LGBT Foundation; a founder member of BiUK and co-author of the Bisexuality Report.

Prof. Richards’ own publications consist of various papers, reports, and book chapters. She is first author of a clinical guidebook on sexuality and gender published by Sage – Richards, C., & Barker. M. (2013). Sexuality and gender for mental health professionals: A practical guide. London: Sage; First editor of the Palgrave Handbook of the Psychology of Sexuality and Gender; First editor of a multidisciplinary book about people who identify outside of the gender binary of male or female – Richards, C., Bouman, W. P., & Barker, M. J. (2018). Genderqueer and non-binary genders. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan; Sole author of the monograph: Richards, C. (2017). [Monograph]. Trans and sexuality – An existentially-informed ethical enquiry with implications for counselling psychology. London: Routledge; And has an co-authored a book on clinical work with trans and non-binary people for the Royal College of Psychiatrists – Richards, C., & Barrett, J. (2020). Trans and non-binary gender healthcare for psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals. Cambridge: Royal College of Psychiatrists/Cambridge University Press.