Michael Lawrence Hendricks is an American psychologist, suicidologist, and an advocate for the LGBTQ community. He has worked in private practice as a partner at the Washington Psychological Center, P.C., in northwest Washington, D.C., since 1999. Hendricks is an adjunct professor of clinical psychopharmacology and has taught at Argosy University, Howard University, and Catholic University of America. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Early life and education
Hendricks was raised in a small conservative town in Western Michigan. He remarked that he spent much of his early life in a state of "quasi-shame" and in "a stealth existence" due to being gay. Hendricks attended Michigan State University as a pre-med student before switching from medicine to a degree in social psychology. He later found that while the majority of social scientists worked in academia, he preferred clinical work under the Boulder model. He completed a master's thesis focused on HIV. Hendricks earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from American University. His dissertation, published in 1993, is titled "The occurrence of suicidal ideation over the course of HIV infection in gay men: A cross-sectional study". His doctoral advisor was Alan Berman.
Career
At the beginning of his career in the early 1990s, the HIV/AIDS crisis influenced Hendricks to address LGBTQ issues.
Hendricks is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA),