Laura Scarrone Bonhomme
Nominee Profile
Location: London
Laura Scarrone Bonhomme (she/her), Psychologist, Author, and LGBTQI+ Advocate
Ms Scarrone graduated in Spain in 2011 with a master’s degree in health psychology and clinical practice. Having observed the debilitating effects that Fibromyalgia had in her mother’s life, she decided to focus her thesis on studying the traumatic experiences often encountered by this population. In the process, she became familiar with the notions of ableism, and the importance of viewing individuals through an intersectional lens. As a trainee, she worked in hospital settings in paediatric oncology and perinatal wards among others. The same year, she moved to Chile to work for charitable organisations supporting children coming from socio-economically deprived areas who lived in the aftermath of the second most destructive earthquake the country had seen. She was later commissioned by the Chilean Ministry of Education to design and deliver a school retention programme targeted at helping adolescents remain in formal education and reduce the risk of unplanned pregnancy and substance misuse, which was elevated in this population.
In 2013, after moving to London, Ms Scarrone started to volunteer for Latin American Women’s Aid, an non-profit dedicated to supporting women and children survivors of domestic violence. In 2014, she started working as a Support Worker providing practical and emotional help to refugees. In 2015, she worked at a private psychiatric hospital with people suffering from severe and enduring mental illness who had been sectioned under the mental health act.
In 2016, Ms Scarrone joined Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services at NHS Oxleas Foundation Trust as a Specialist Clinical Psychologist; and the same year, she joined the Adult Gender Identity Clinic in London (currently part of the Tavistock and Portman Foundation Trust). There, she supervised assistant psychologists, guiding them in research projects on detransition rates, establishing the prevalence of people belonging to ethnic minority accessing gender-affirming care, measuring the impact of gender-affirming psychological therapy over the wellbeing on trans and non-binary people, and a qualitative piece looking at the motivations for seeking gender specialist counselling.
In 2018, understanding the importance of combating stigma and misinformation through research, she started to pursue a dual career as a clinician and as an academic in the field of transgender health, bringing to light the needs her patients relayed in therapy. To date she has provided assessment and psychotherapy for over 700 transgender and non-binary clients as well as their loved ones.
As Head of Mental Health Services at Teladoc Health UK (2020–2022), Ms Scarrone built and led a team of over 70 mental health professionals. While overseeing service delivery, she ensured all staff were trained in gender-affirming care, personally leading educational sessions and providing ad-hoc supervision to support clinicians working with LGBTQI+ clients. Her leadership established a culture of inclusivity and clinical excellence, enhancing service quality for queer people.
In 2022, following the birth of her child, Ms Scarrone dedicated herself fully to pursue her passion for supporting transgender and non-binary communities. Observing the health inequalities faced by these populations and the discrimination they often reported when trying to access essential healthcare, she co-founded Affirm (www.affirm.lgbt). Affirm is an online training platform dedicated to teaching gender-affirming care to healthcare providers. Ms Scarrone collaborated with her own patients to integrate interviews in the training she delivered, and focused on reflexivity and compassion as key skills to develop. To date, Affirm has trained over 450 clinicians in 12 countries. She has shared her insights with organisations like the United Nations and the World Professional Association of Transgender Health WPATH). This work has earned Ms Scarrone the 2025 Health & Wellbeing Businesswoman of the Year Award granted by Business Awards UK.
Over the course of nine years, Ms Scarrone has actively shared her knowledge in 14 national and international conferences. She has also contributed to academic literature with three book reviews, a book chapter, an article, and her co-authored book, ‘Gender Affirming Therapy: A Guide to What Transgender and Non-Binary Clients Can Teach Us’. Her work has been praised in The Psychologist’s BPS review as “valuing the humanity, diversity, and uniqueness”. The book has also received praise from Matthew Mills, former President of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists (BAGIS), for its critical engagement with clinical privilege and its emphasis on centering trans and non-binary narratives in therapeutic practice.
Her research has drawn attention to a wide array of topics, including the experiences of parents of trans people. She applied the Stages of Grief Model to illustrate the phases of denial and acceptance they often experience. She collaborated with the charity Families Together London to write this chapter, consulting with parents on their experiences.
Ms Scarrone coined the term Identity-Based Trauma (IBT) to describe the trauma-like responses found in individuals belonging to stigmatised communities in relation to their own identities. Alongside Dr Beattie, she co-created a working model for IBT that has been shared in numerous conferences, training courses, and has taken protagonism as one of the chapters in their book. This model supports the democratisation of gender work allowing any practitioner with trauma-informed training to feel prepared to work with trans communities.
Lastly, fascinated by the repeated narratives reported by her trans patients when looking in the mirror, she wrote the paper Gender Dysphoria and the Mirror. This paper helps explain the dissonance trans people experience, and the behavioural and emotional patterns that this creates with the mirror, from avoidance to obsessional checking. This paper also provide formulations for the high co-occurrence of neuro-divergence and gender diversity, highlighting sensory hypersensitivities as one of the issues that might make autistic and ADHD trans people more likely to perceive dysphoria.
Most recently, she has focused on unveiling unconscious clinical biases and examining how clinicians' intersectional identities influence their practice when working with trans people. In September 2023, she co-presented a Round Table at the World Professional Association of Transgender’s Health Conference in Lisbon addressing this very topic. The event was attended by 350 international experts who described it as “thought provoking” and who felt “enlightened by the content”.
Her written material has been described by trans community members as “accessible, compassionate and really helpful in furthering my understanding and acceptance of what has been a life-long and recurring issue for me.”
Currently, Ms Scarrone is working on developing a trauma-informed pathway for survivors of sexual assault accessing gender-affirming surgeries. After having supported patients with a history of sexual trauma and who struggled to care for themselves following particularly genital surgery, she followed on this conversation with surgical providers, who described often feeling unsure and awkward about how to screen for and support them. This area has been understudied up until this stage and she is collaborating with renowned surgeons in the field to develop and integrate these measures. She hopes to present the results of this project at the upcoming European Association of Transgender Health Conference in Hamburg in 2025.
Ms Scarrone aims to foster research, professional development, and systemic improvements in transgender healthcare. Through mentorship, clinical supervision, and training, she has aimed at empowering early career researchers and clinicians while actively working to bridge inequalities in care. Her leadership has directly influenced research output, service provision, and the professional education of healthcare providers.
Ms Scarrone’s research is distinguished by its originality and methodological approach, which is deeply embedded in clinical practice. She utilises patient narratives to identify emerging themes and pressing issues within transgender healthcare, ensuring that research reflects the lived experiences of those it seeks to support. Her work challenges dominant paradigms by humanising gender dysphoria and providing a humanistic, reflective approach to understanding identity.
Beyond academic publications, Ms Scarrone’s insights have reached a broader audience through media engagement with The Telegraph, Women’s Health Magazine, Glamour, German National TV -2DF, Bored Panda, and the BPS’ publication, The Psychologist. Also, she has been interviewed in a variety of podcasts including Self Matters, Gender Stories, and Culture, Sex, and Relationship.
She has served as an Associate Editor for the Counselling Psychology Review and has been a keynote speaker at multiple high-profile events, including the Annual Conference of Cognitive Analytic Therapy, the Nuffield Health Conference, and the Psych Health Conference. Ms Scarrone Bonhomme has also played a leadership role within professional associations, serving as an Ordinary Member of the BPS’ Committee on Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Diversity since 2023. In this capacity, she is working on the development of an LGBTQI+ affirming register to support psychologists' training and safeguard the public against conversion therapy practices.
Beyond academia, Ms Scarrone is committed to wider public engagement. She has delivered training sessions and talks for charitable organisations such as Families Together London, Free2Be, Transgender Europe (TGEU), and Saplinq. She has worked with academic institutions including Roehampton University and University College Cork. She has trained healthcare teams within NHS Oxleas Foundation Trust, NHS Wales, NHS Arden, the Slovak Psychiatric Society; and private providers including Teladoc Health, New Victoria Hospital, The Creo Clinic, The Harley Street Gender Clinic, and PsychHealth. Additionally, she has provided consultancy and training for corporate clients such as AIG, Canada Life, Aviva, YuLife, and Webex. Most recently, she has contributed to the United Nations’ Half-day of general discussion on gender stereotypes.
The uniting theme of Ms Scarrone’s career has been her dedication to working with the most vulnerable and stigmatised sections of the population. Having worked with people living in poverty, living with disabilities, refugees, survivors of domestic violence, and queer communities. She has consistently focused on social justice and supporting resilience of her patients. Through these engagements, she has actively shaped professional training and public discourse, fostering a more inclusive and affirming approach to mental health and transgender healthcare. Her research-informed resources, working models, and tools continue to support clinicians and organisations in developing trans-inclusive practices. Through rigorous scholarship, interdisciplinary collaborations, and extensive knowledge dissemination, she has established herself as a leading figure in the field, dedicated to improving the lives of transgender and non-binary individuals. Given her dedication, Ms Scarrone is a deserving recipient of the Lifetime Achiever National Diversity Award.
Ms Scarrone graduated in Spain in 2011 with a master’s degree in health psychology and clinical practice. Having observed the debilitating effects that Fibromyalgia had in her mother’s life, she decided to focus her thesis on studying the traumatic experiences often encountered by this population. In the process, she became familiar with the notions of ableism, and the importance of viewing individuals through an intersectional lens. As a trainee, she worked in hospital settings in paediatric oncology and perinatal wards among others. The same year, she moved to Chile to work for charitable organisations supporting children coming from socio-economically deprived areas who lived in the aftermath of the second most destructive earthquake the country had seen. She was later commissioned by the Chilean Ministry of Education to design and deliver a school retention programme targeted at helping adolescents remain in formal education and reduce the risk of unplanned pregnancy and substance misuse, which was elevated in this population.
In 2013, after moving to London, Ms Scarrone started to volunteer for Latin American Women’s Aid, an non-profit dedicated to supporting women and children survivors of domestic violence. In 2014, she started working as a Support Worker providing practical and emotional help to refugees. In 2015, she worked at a private psychiatric hospital with people suffering from severe and enduring mental illness who had been sectioned under the mental health act.
In 2016, Ms Scarrone joined Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services at NHS Oxleas Foundation Trust as a Specialist Clinical Psychologist; and the same year, she joined the Adult Gender Identity Clinic in London (currently part of the Tavistock and Portman Foundation Trust). There, she supervised assistant psychologists, guiding them in research projects on detransition rates, establishing the prevalence of people belonging to ethnic minority accessing gender-affirming care, measuring the impact of gender-affirming psychological therapy over the wellbeing on trans and non-binary people, and a qualitative piece looking at the motivations for seeking gender specialist counselling.
In 2018, understanding the importance of combating stigma and misinformation through research, she started to pursue a dual career as a clinician and as an academic in the field of transgender health, bringing to light the needs her patients relayed in therapy. To date she has provided assessment and psychotherapy for over 700 transgender and non-binary clients as well as their loved ones.
As Head of Mental Health Services at Teladoc Health UK (2020–2022), Ms Scarrone built and led a team of over 70 mental health professionals. While overseeing service delivery, she ensured all staff were trained in gender-affirming care, personally leading educational sessions and providing ad-hoc supervision to support clinicians working with LGBTQI+ clients. Her leadership established a culture of inclusivity and clinical excellence, enhancing service quality for queer people.
In 2022, following the birth of her child, Ms Scarrone dedicated herself fully to pursue her passion for supporting transgender and non-binary communities. Observing the health inequalities faced by these populations and the discrimination they often reported when trying to access essential healthcare, she co-founded Affirm (www.affirm.lgbt). Affirm is an online training platform dedicated to teaching gender-affirming care to healthcare providers. Ms Scarrone collaborated with her own patients to integrate interviews in the training she delivered, and focused on reflexivity and compassion as key skills to develop. To date, Affirm has trained over 450 clinicians in 12 countries. She has shared her insights with organisations like the United Nations and the World Professional Association of Transgender Health WPATH). This work has earned Ms Scarrone the 2025 Health & Wellbeing Businesswoman of the Year Award granted by Business Awards UK.
Over the course of nine years, Ms Scarrone has actively shared her knowledge in 14 national and international conferences. She has also contributed to academic literature with three book reviews, a book chapter, an article, and her co-authored book, ‘Gender Affirming Therapy: A Guide to What Transgender and Non-Binary Clients Can Teach Us’. Her work has been praised in The Psychologist’s BPS review as “valuing the humanity, diversity, and uniqueness”. The book has also received praise from Matthew Mills, former President of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists (BAGIS), for its critical engagement with clinical privilege and its emphasis on centering trans and non-binary narratives in therapeutic practice.
Her research has drawn attention to a wide array of topics, including the experiences of parents of trans people. She applied the Stages of Grief Model to illustrate the phases of denial and acceptance they often experience. She collaborated with the charity Families Together London to write this chapter, consulting with parents on their experiences.
Ms Scarrone coined the term Identity-Based Trauma (IBT) to describe the trauma-like responses found in individuals belonging to stigmatised communities in relation to their own identities. Alongside Dr Beattie, she co-created a working model for IBT that has been shared in numerous conferences, training courses, and has taken protagonism as one of the chapters in their book. This model supports the democratisation of gender work allowing any practitioner with trauma-informed training to feel prepared to work with trans communities.
Lastly, fascinated by the repeated narratives reported by her trans patients when looking in the mirror, she wrote the paper Gender Dysphoria and the Mirror. This paper helps explain the dissonance trans people experience, and the behavioural and emotional patterns that this creates with the mirror, from avoidance to obsessional checking. This paper also provide formulations for the high co-occurrence of neuro-divergence and gender diversity, highlighting sensory hypersensitivities as one of the issues that might make autistic and ADHD trans people more likely to perceive dysphoria.
Most recently, she has focused on unveiling unconscious clinical biases and examining how clinicians' intersectional identities influence their practice when working with trans people. In September 2023, she co-presented a Round Table at the World Professional Association of Transgender’s Health Conference in Lisbon addressing this very topic. The event was attended by 350 international experts who described it as “thought provoking” and who felt “enlightened by the content”.
Her written material has been described by trans community members as “accessible, compassionate and really helpful in furthering my understanding and acceptance of what has been a life-long and recurring issue for me.”
Currently, Ms Scarrone is working on developing a trauma-informed pathway for survivors of sexual assault accessing gender-affirming surgeries. After having supported patients with a history of sexual trauma and who struggled to care for themselves following particularly genital surgery, she followed on this conversation with surgical providers, who described often feeling unsure and awkward about how to screen for and support them. This area has been understudied up until this stage and she is collaborating with renowned surgeons in the field to develop and integrate these measures. She hopes to present the results of this project at the upcoming European Association of Transgender Health Conference in Hamburg in 2025.
Ms Scarrone aims to foster research, professional development, and systemic improvements in transgender healthcare. Through mentorship, clinical supervision, and training, she has aimed at empowering early career researchers and clinicians while actively working to bridge inequalities in care. Her leadership has directly influenced research output, service provision, and the professional education of healthcare providers.
Ms Scarrone’s research is distinguished by its originality and methodological approach, which is deeply embedded in clinical practice. She utilises patient narratives to identify emerging themes and pressing issues within transgender healthcare, ensuring that research reflects the lived experiences of those it seeks to support. Her work challenges dominant paradigms by humanising gender dysphoria and providing a humanistic, reflective approach to understanding identity.
Beyond academic publications, Ms Scarrone’s insights have reached a broader audience through media engagement with The Telegraph, Women’s Health Magazine, Glamour, German National TV -2DF, Bored Panda, and the BPS’ publication, The Psychologist. Also, she has been interviewed in a variety of podcasts including Self Matters, Gender Stories, and Culture, Sex, and Relationship.
She has served as an Associate Editor for the Counselling Psychology Review and has been a keynote speaker at multiple high-profile events, including the Annual Conference of Cognitive Analytic Therapy, the Nuffield Health Conference, and the Psych Health Conference. Ms Scarrone Bonhomme has also played a leadership role within professional associations, serving as an Ordinary Member of the BPS’ Committee on Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Diversity since 2023. In this capacity, she is working on the development of an LGBTQI+ affirming register to support psychologists' training and safeguard the public against conversion therapy practices.
Beyond academia, Ms Scarrone is committed to wider public engagement. She has delivered training sessions and talks for charitable organisations such as Families Together London, Free2Be, Transgender Europe (TGEU), and Saplinq. She has worked with academic institutions including Roehampton University and University College Cork. She has trained healthcare teams within NHS Oxleas Foundation Trust, NHS Wales, NHS Arden, the Slovak Psychiatric Society; and private providers including Teladoc Health, New Victoria Hospital, The Creo Clinic, The Harley Street Gender Clinic, and PsychHealth. Additionally, she has provided consultancy and training for corporate clients such as AIG, Canada Life, Aviva, YuLife, and Webex. Most recently, she has contributed to the United Nations’ Half-day of general discussion on gender stereotypes.
The uniting theme of Ms Scarrone’s career has been her dedication to working with the most vulnerable and stigmatised sections of the population. Having worked with people living in poverty, living with disabilities, refugees, survivors of domestic violence, and queer communities. She has consistently focused on social justice and supporting resilience of her patients. Through these engagements, she has actively shaped professional training and public discourse, fostering a more inclusive and affirming approach to mental health and transgender healthcare. Her research-informed resources, working models, and tools continue to support clinicians and organisations in developing trans-inclusive practices. Through rigorous scholarship, interdisciplinary collaborations, and extensive knowledge dissemination, she has established herself as a leading figure in the field, dedicated to improving the lives of transgender and non-binary individuals. Given her dedication, Ms Scarrone is a deserving recipient of the Lifetime Achiever National Diversity Award.