Last week, Informed Dissent released covertly recorded audio from inside two sessions at the 2026 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco — audio that was leaked to us, and that we believe the public has every right to hear. This week, Jamie, Lauren, and Cori sit down to discuss what’s on those recordings and what it tells us about the current state of psychiatry’s relationship with gender medicine.

Then, Jamie and Lauren sit down with Sara Stockton — a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, lecturer, researcher, and clinical supervisor of a psychotherapy practice in central New York — who was also in attendance at the APA Annual Meeting this year as an observer.

Sara’s story is one of the more important insider accounts in this space. She spent the first part of her career as a clinician treating and advocating on behalf of youth and families navigating gender questions. She entered the field in 2008, treated hundreds of families, and wrote many of the first letters used to approve gender transition surgeries on minors. In 2013, she co-authored one of the first mental health assessments in the United States designed to evaluate whether a young person was ready for medical gender transition.

In 2022, Sara was featured in the documentary What Is a Woman?, where she spoke publicly for the first time about her professional journey — the moments of doubt, the realizations that came too late for too many patients, and her decision to raise awareness about what she had witnessed from the inside. She has since become one of the clearest voices among clinician whistleblowers, and her willingness to show up at events like the APA — to watch, to listen, and to bear witness — says everything about how seriously she takes the accountability work still ahead.

In her conversation with Jamie and Lauren, Sara shares what she observed at the conference, what the sessions revealed about where organized psychiatry stands today, and what it was like to sit in those rooms knowing what she knows.

Guest: Sara Stockton, LMFT on X: @MrsSaraStockton | aislingtherapy.com

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