Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté M.D. is a physician, author, seminar leader and public speaker. He is a former medical columnist for The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail. His four books, all Canadian bestsellers, range in topic from Attention Deficit Disorder (Scattered Minds) , on which he has a unique perspective; to the mind/body unity and the influence of stress in health and illness (When The Body Says No); to the disastrous loss of parental influence in today’s culture (Hold On To Your Kids). The most recently published, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction has been a #1 national bestseller and has been awarded the Hubert Evans prize for literary non-fiction. For twenty years Dr. Maté had a family practice, and for seven years was Medical Coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital. For eleven years he has worked in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with patients challenged by hard core drug addiction, mental illness and HIV. He has lectured at the University of California (Berkeley and San Francisco,) at Alabama State University, at McGill University, at Washington State University and has addressed many groups of physicians and health care providers, educators, psychologists, therapists, parents and other members of the lay public. In 2009 has been an invited presenter for the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in Ottawa.

In 2009 Dr. Maté has been honoured with an Outstanding Alumnus Award from Simon Fraser University. His next book, to be published in 2010, will be The Bully Syndrome: A New Look at a Contemporary Malaise, co-written with developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.