“Where did that bruise come from?”: Navigating Health Care for the Kink Community

In this class, we will discuss how to find medical and mental health professionals who are affirmative of BDSM and/or ethically non-monogamous lifestyles. We will also discuss if it is necessary to find a kink-aware professional and how sometimes there can be complications and pitfalls associated with doing so, in addition to potential benefits. We will also cover some of the nuances of finding mental health care in New York and potential topics a kink-aware mental health professional may be particularly well-suited to address. Guidelines on the mandated reporting rules clinicians must follow will be discussed. Confidentiality expectations and health-care proxies will be explained. The practice of Risk Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) and how it relates to physicians or therapists providing guidance regarding RACK will be explored.

Carlene MacMillan, M.D. is a board-certified adult and child psychiatrist who runs a private group mental health practice in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Dr.MacMillan and the practice itself, Brooklyn Minds, identifies as being affirmative of individuals within the kink, sex positive and LGBQTIA communities. She presents nationally and locally to other mental health and medical professionals on a wide variety of topics, from managing one’s professional social media identity to the treatment of borderline personality disorder in young people. She has special interest and expertise in working with individuals with complex PTSD and dissociative disorders as well as individuals with personality disorders, having trained and worked at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts on the trauma and dissociative inpatient unit.

This event is for female and gender non-conforming s-types only. Seriously. We aren’t even kidding.