Michael Shernoff

Michael Shernoff (March 31, 1951 – June 17, 2008) was an American openly gay psychotherapist who specialized in serving the mental health needs of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people and was author of several influential publications on the topics of HIV/AIDS prevention and the mental health concerns of gay men.

Biography Shernoff was born in Queens, New York, on March 31, 1951. He attended New York City schools. He graduated from the Harpur College at Binghamton University and in 1977 received a master's degree in social work from the School of Social Welfare of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

As a licensed clinical social worker, he offered outpatient mental health services in Chelsea in New York City. He also taught at Hunter College from 1991 to 2001, and from 2002 until his retirement in 2006 he served on the faculty of the Columbia University School of Social Work. From 1997 until 2004 he was the online mental health expert for the HIV/AIDS website TheBody.com.

He was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1982, but lived free of AIDS symptoms. At the time of his death from pancreatic cancer in Manhattan in June 2008, his brother Jeffrey Shernoff told The New York Times that he found it ironic that after years of living with HIV infection, "He died of pancreatic cancer, which may not even be related." was translated into eight languages.

Shernoff produced, following the AIDS death of a partner, an anthology entitled Gay Widowers: Life after the Death of a Partner that ten years later was described as still being the only book to address the specific challenges of grief for gay men having lost their partners.