Heval Özgen

M. Heval Özgen, MD PhD, is a psychiatrist and yogini who immigrated from Mesopotamia to the Netherlands in 2002. Fascinated by consciousness and mind since early childhood. Coming directly from a healer lineage of mystic Sufism, she travelled widely in the Middle East and India with a great interest in shamanic healing modalities. During her high school years in Turkey, she started to work voluntarily for marginalized and underserved groups. Currently, her research is focused on understanding the role of self-acceptance, stress and (interpersonal) trauma in transgender and gender diverse communities with a particular focus on the transcultural psychiatry. She has published extensively in research journals and has delivered many invited presentations on both research and training matters and has supervised numerous projects at the post graduate level. She is the research coordinator of i-psy (intercultural psychiatry department) and serves on the board of the Transcultural Psychiatry section of the Dutch Psychiatric Association (NvVP). Her main areas of interest are plant medicines, mystical/non-dual state of consciousness, self, gender identity. Her passion is learning life through her precious daughter and the group therapy treatments for marginalized groups such as Turkish speaking transgender group which she is currently running.