Gianna Delfino is an occupational therapist, yoga teacher, and mental health advocate who brings both professional knowledge and lived experience to her work in mental health. Living with borderline personality disorder and chronic health challenges has shaped her understanding of how complex and interconnected mental and physical health can be, particularly when navigating healthcare systems that most often separate the two.

Gianna is passionate about collaborative, person-centered care and believes that people should be active participants in their own treatment rather than passive recipients of it. She values open-mindedness, curiosity, and humility in clinical relationships, recognizing that no single provider, diagnosis, or treatment approach can fully capture the complexity of a person’s experience. She believes clinicians should remain willing to listen, reconsider assumptions, and learn from the people they serve, including when a patient’s experience does not fit neatly into a diagnostic framework.

As a pediatric occupational therapist, Gianna practices from a trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming, and autonomy-centered perspective. Her clinical work has reinforced her belief that meaningful care begins with considering the whole person.

In her presentation, Gianna draws on her lived experience with BPD and chronic illness to advocate for more collaborative, compassionate, and individualized mental health care. She explores the importance of appropriate therapeutic support, reducing stigma, recognizing the intersection of physical and mental health, and creating clinical relationships in which patients feel believed, respected, and genuinely heard.

Gianna hopes to contribute to a broader understanding of BPD that moves beyond stereotypes and symptom checklists toward a more nuanced view of the person experiencing them. Her advocacy is grounded in a simple belief: effective care should not require someone to surrender their voice, autonomy, or humanity in order to receive help.