Specialization
Annelou de Vries is a child and adolescent psychiatrist working at the Amsterdam UMC/ Levvel Amsterdam Academic Center of Child and Adolescent psychiatry. Her main and special interest is dedicated to transgender adolescents. Apart from her clinical work with these adolescents, Annelou de Vries leads a line of research and publishes and supervises several studies on mental health and treatment evaluation. Annelou de Vries is leading the Child Psychiatry Department of the Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria of the Amsterdam UMC. She is president 2023-2025 of the European Professional Association of Transgender Health (EPATH). She co-chaired the Adolescent Assessment Chapter of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) 8th revision of their Standards of Care (Coleman et al., 2022). Annelou de Vries is further full staff member of the department of child and adolescent psychiatry and as such participating in teaching and training of medical students, nurses, and pediatric and child & adolescent psychiatry residents. Her clinical work is further dedicated to adolescents admitted for an intensive OCD, Anxiety and Somatoform symptoms program.
Focus of research
Since she was introduced in the field of transgender care and research by Professor in Psychology and pioneer Peggy Cohen-Kettenis, Annelou de Vries has become one of the most well published professionals in the field herself and was e.g. involved as the co-chair of the adolescent section of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health Standards Of Care (SOC8) revision committee., as a member of the DSM-5 text revision.
Since obtaining her PhD regarding transgender adolescents, her research has always had a direct link to clinical practice of transgender care for adolescents with mental health and treatment evaluation as focus of her line of research.
At present, she assigned six PhD students and two post-doc fellows on lines of research that all focus on important gaps in the literature on transgender adolescent health: 1) the co-occurrence of autism and gender dysphoria, 2) informed consent and decision making in transgender care for adolescents, 3) long-term follow-up into middle adulthood, 4) sexual health, 5) developmental pathways and 6) communicating about uncertainty in Transgender and DSD (differences in sex development) care. She will appoint two more PhD students on her vidi project ‘Strengthening transgender care for Adolescents’. Two of my PhD students have finished their projects.