Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté CM (/ˈɡɑːbɔːr ˈmɑːteɪ/ GAH-bor MAH-tay; born January 1944) is a Canadian physician. He has a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development, trauma and potential lifelong impacts on physical and mental health, including autoimmune disease, cancer, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and addictions.
Maté's approach to addiction focuses on the trauma his patients have suffered and looks to address this in their recovery. In his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, Maté discusses the types of trauma suffered by persons with substance use disorders and how these disorders affect their decision making in later life.
He has written five books exploring topics including ADHD, stress, developmental psychology, and addiction. He is a regular columnist for the Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail.
Maté was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944 to a Jewish family. His maternal grandparents, Josef Lövi and Hannah Lövi, who came from the town of Košice in eastern Slovakia, were killed in Auschwitz when he was five months old. His aunt disappeared during the war, and his father endured forced labour at the hands of the Nazi Party. When he was one, Maté's mother put him in the care of a stranger for over five weeks to save his life. Upon their reunion, the infant Maté was so hurt that he avoided looking at his mother for several days. He claims this trauma of "abandonment, rage, and despair" continues to manifest itself in his adult life, leading to similar altercations when he perceives a threat of abandonment, especially from his wife.
In 1956, the Maté family immigrated to Canada. He was a student during the Vietnam War era in the late 1960s and graduated with a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
In 1969, Maté married artist and fellow UBC graduate Rae Maté (born 1948); together they have three children: Daniel, Hannah Rose, and writer and journalist Aaron.
After working as a high school English and literature teacher for several years, Maté returned to the University of British Columbia to obtain his M.D. in general family practice in 1977.
Maté ran a private family practice in East Vancouver for over 20 years. He was the medical coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital for seven years. For 12 years, he was the staff physician at Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre in downtown Vancouver. Many of his patients had co-occurring mental health and substance use concerns, in addition to chronic health concerns, such as HIV. He worked in harm reduction clinics in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He has written about his experiences working with persons with substance use disorders in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
In 2008, Maté made national headlines in defence of the physicians working at Insite (a legally supervised safe injection site) after the federal Minister of Health, Tony Clement, attacked them as unethical.
In 2010, Maté became interested in the traditional Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca and its potential for treating addictions. He partnered with a Peruvian Shipibo ayahuasquero (traditional shamanic healer) and began leading multi-day retreats for addiction treatment, including ones in a Coast Salish First Nations community that were the subject of an observational study by health researchers from the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia. Although preliminary and limited by the observational study design, the research results showed that participants had significant improvements in some psychological measures and reductions in problematic substance use, suggesting that Maté's claims of therapeutic efficacy may be well-founded. However, when the Canadian federal government learned about Maté's work with ayahuasca in 2011, Health Canada threatened to refer the matter to the RCMP if he did not immediately stop his activities with an illegal drug.
In his books and lectures, Maté emphasizes the role of biopsychosocial aspects of pathology and the role of psychological trauma and stress. He underlines the importance of relations and social attachment for learning and health. His ideas are consistent with a trauma-informed care framework.
Maté defines addiction as the use of any behaviour or substance to relieve pain in the short term, that leads to negative consequences in the long term. Without addressing the root cause of the pain, a person may try to stop but will ultimately crave further relief and be prone to relapse. By this definition, many things in modern culture have the potential to become addictive such as gambling, sex, food, work, social media, and drugs. He argues the "war on drugs" actually punishes people for having been abused and entrenches addiction more deeply, as studies show that stress is the biggest driver of addictive relapse and behaviour. He says a system that marginalizes, ostracizes, and institutionalizes people in facilities with no care and easy access to drugs, only worsens the problem.
Stanton Peele, psychologist and psychotherapist, disagrees with Maté's notion of "trac[ing] every case of addiction back to childhood trauma, stating that "most addicts weren't traumatized as kids; most traumatized people don't become addicts." Peele writes that Maté, whom he still admires for his work with Insite where he also had worked, offers "a reductionist vision of addiction" that does not "account for people's natural tendency to overcome abuse and addictive experiences," and ignores the "strong tendency that has been revealed, time and again, for people with addictions to naturally remediate." Peele, in general, disagrees with the theory adopted decades ago by modern physicians, mental health professionals, research scientists, and others, that addiction is a disease and opposes all twelve-step drug and alcohol treatment programs.
Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania James C. Coyne claimed that Maté, by "piling bonkers claims on bonkers claims," "urges us to abandon what has evolved to be evidence-based solutions to health and social problem," though he concedes that "overspecialization in research and clinical practice is an important issue, especially for the management of difficult-to-diagnosis [sic], multiple comorbidities with multiple medications."
In a live-streamed interview with Prince Harry in March 2023, Maté diagnosed the prince publicly with PTSD, ADHD, anxiety, and depression, based on his conversation with him and reading his autobiography Spare. During the chat, Maté told Prince Harry that he had diagnosed him with ADD after reading through his book and hearing about his life experiences. His decision to do so was described as unorthodox and reckless by some critics.
In a July 2014 opinion piece, titled "Beautiful Dream of Israel has become a Nightmare", Maté described how the policies imposed by Israel were not compatible with a just peace and how "There is no understanding Gaza out of context". Maté drew direct comparisons between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto and commented on the severe power imbalance: "Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery."
In November 2023 Maté was interviewed by Piers Morgan. In the course of the interview, he described how he cried every day for two weeks after visiting Gaza. He also called for an end to the occupation and persecution of Palestinians, as well as a return of Palestinian land occupied since 1967.