Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté was born in January 1944 in Hungary amid Nazi occupation, during a traumatic period for his Jewish family; his grandparents were killed, his father was forced into labor, and his aunt went missing, exposing infant Maté to his mother's profound stress. He immigrated to Canada, initially working as a high school English and literature teacher before returning to the University of British Columbia to earn his M.D. in general family practice in 1977. Maté ran a private family practice in East Vancouver for over 20 years and served as medical coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital for seven years. He then focused on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, collaborating with Portland Hotel Society (PHS) founder Liz Evans to advance harm reduction initiatives, including needle exchanges, supervised injection sites like Insite, and housing-first programs. Notably, he prescribed methadone without mandating therapy or suspending doses for illicit opioid use, emphasizing trauma's role in addiction over punitive measures. Now retired from practice, Maté is an internationally renowned speaker and author of books like In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (2008), When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (2003), Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder (1999), and Hold On to Your Kids (co-authored with Gordon Neufeld, 2004), plus The Myth of Normal (2022). His work promotes a biopsychosocial model, linking early trauma, stress, and attachment disruptions to conditions like addiction, ADHD, cancer, and autoimmune diseases, while advocating trauma-informed care and Compassionate Inquiry—a psychotherapeutic method he developed.