Monday, October 12, 2026 | 7:00 PM CT

Girlhood, Translated: Understanding Young Women in the Age of Therapy Speak and Self-Diagnosis
A FAN program featuring Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell, MD, in conversation with Erica Ghignone, MD
North Shore Country Day Auditorium, 310 Green Bay Rd., Winnetka, IL 60093
No registration required.

Book Giveaway: FAN is giving away copies of Girlhood, Translated at the event, while supplies last.

Over the past decade, psychiatrist Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell, MD, has noticed a striking shift in her practice. The girls and young women who come to her increasingly describe their pain, their conflicts, and the ordinary challenges of growing up in the language of diagnosis: anxiety, trauma, ADHD, dysregulation. Yet they struggle to put their feelings into words outside those labels, and in medicalizing their pain they often both dramatize and minimize it, obscuring what they are really facing.

In Girlhood, Translated: Understanding Young Women in the Age of Therapy Speak and Self-Diagnosis, Garfinkle-Crowell offers a compassionate, unabashedly pro-girl look at what it is like to be a young woman today. Blending clinical insight, cultural criticism, and intimate stories from the therapy room, she argues that therapy speak is something medicine and society handed to girls that is now alienating them from themselves and from the people who love them. She is clear-eyed about psychiatry’s pitfalls, from its gendered history to the rush to medicalize normal teenage emotion, while honoring its power to help and heal.

Neither anti-therapy nor uncritically pro-diagnosis, Garfinkle-Crowell equips parents and girls with the language for better, more meaningful conversations.

Garfinkle-Crowell will be in conversation with Erica Ghignone, MD, medical director at Compass Health Center Chicago and a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in addiction psychiatry.

This event is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. It will be recorded but not live streamed and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

Sponsored by FAN, partnership with The Alliance for Early Childhood, The Ancona School, The Avery Coonley School, Avoca D37, Baker Demonstration School, Barrington D220, Beacon Academy, Bennett Day School, Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, Brickton Montessori School, British International School of Chicago, Catherine Cook School, Compass Health Center, Connections Health, Countryside Day School, Evanston Scholars, Evanston Township HS D202, The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Family Service Center, Foundation 65, The Frances Xavier Warde School, Francis W. Parker School, Glenbrook HS D225, Glencoe D35, Glenview Public Library, Gorton Center, Hyde Park Day School, Illinois Student Assistance Commission, Josephinum Academy, Kenilworth D38, Lake Bluff D65, Latin School of Chicago, Leo Catholic High School, Lycée Français de Chicago, Magnetar Capital, Near North Montessori School, North Shore Country Day, Northwestern University Office of Neighborhood and Community Relations, Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy, Oakton College, Pope John XXIII School, Psychgeist Media, Regina Dominican High School, Rogers Park Montessori School, Sacred Heart Schools, Santa Clara University School of Law, Science & Arts Academy, The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, Stevenson HS D125, Township High School D113, Township High School D214, Wilmette Public Library, The Winnetka Public Schools, Wintrust Bank, Wolcott College Prep, Woodlands Academy, Youth & Opportunity United.