Benjamin Ertman (he/him)

LIFE Fellow since 2026, University of Virginia

I am a fourth-year student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Virginia working with Paul Perrin. I completed my bachelor’s degree at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, where I double majored in Psychology and Mandarin Chinese language. My graduate research focuses on the relationship between disability and mental and physical health behaviors in individuals with disabilities and chronic health conditions, including those with acquired physical disabilities. I use advanced machine learning and statistical techniques, including random forest models, to investigate these lines of inquiry. In my dissertation work, I hope to explore how perceptions of gender identity, disability identity, and internalized ableism among individuals across the lifespan with a disability or chronic health condition influence mental and physical health outcomes and behaviors.

Selected Publications

Cull, S. L., Ertman, B., Coston, B. E., Lee, M., & Perrin, P. B. (2026). Healthcare discrimination and medical mistrust among transgender and gender nonbinary disabled adults. International Journal of Transgender Health. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2026.2642266

Ertman, B., Xia, B., Malhotra, B., Christ, B. R., Cull, S., & Perrin, P. B. (2026). The Disability Identity Development Scale–Short Form: Development and validation in general and TGNB disability samples. Rehabilitation Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/rep0000655

Ertman, B., Xia, B., Sloane, M., Hartvigsen, T., & Perrin, Paul B. (2026). Disability portrayals in artificial intelligence text-to-image generation: Influence of context and the medicalization of disability. Rehabilitation Psychology, 71(2), 272-282. https://doi.org/10.1037/rep0000634