Emery Hetrick

Emery Hetrick (1931 to 1987) was an American psychiatrist who co-founded an institution for gay and lesbian young people. Born in Columbus, Ohio, he graduated from Ohio State University in 1953 and from Cornell University Medical School in 1957. He worked as an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, as an attending psychiatrist and supervisor at Harlem Hospital Center, where he headed the psychiatric crisis and emergency treatment unit, and as acting chief of psychiatry at the Gouverneur Diagnostic and Treatment Center. He was the first psychiatrist hired by the Ackerman Institute for the Family, later served as an associate medical director at Pfizer, and sat on a New York State task force on gay and lesbian issues. In 1979, with his partner A. Damien Martin, he founded the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth, renamed the Hetrick-Martin Institute in his honour after he died of AIDS-related respiratory failure at 56.