Mental health

Professor Jackie Curtis was appointed inaugural Executive Director in April 2020. She is a psychiatrist and was previously the Clinical Director of Youth Mental Health at the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District. Her research and clinical work over several decades has focused on early psychosis and youth mental health, including improving the cardiometabolic health of people living with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia, with the aim of reducing health inequalities and increasing life expectancy. Jackie developed and implemented the internationally recognised Keeping the Body in Mind program, demonstrating that antipsychotic-induced weight gain can be prevented with lifestyle intervention, and is the co-founder and Co-Chair of the iphYs international working group advocating for improved physical health for youth experiencing psychosis. An invited committee member of the World Health Organisation working group for the international guidelines: management of physical health conditions in adults with severe mental disorders, Jackie is also a Conjoint Professor in the School of Psychiatry at UNSW Sydney. In 2023 she was the recipient of the prestigious Margaret Tobin Award from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.

Professor Raghu Lingam is Professor in Paediatric Population Health at the University of NSW, Honorary Professor at the Black Dog Institute and a Consultant Community Paediatrician in the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network. He established and leads the Population Child Health Research group at UNSW and co-leads the Kids to Adults clinical academic group as part of Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise (SPHERE).

Professor Lingam’s expertise is in the development of health services interventions that are evaluated at scale; he has run randomised controlled trials in the Australia, UK, India, Pakistan, Uganda, and Mozambique. He co-leads the Children and Young Peoples’ Health Partnership (CYPHP) a health systems transformation initiative for over 120,000 children in London based around a primary care-based learning health system.  Over the last 5 years he has attracted more than £11.5million of UK research funding from the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research, the World Bank, and national charity and Government funding. In Australia he has attracted more than $7 million of research funding over the last two years.

Associate Professor Justine Gatt is Head of the Gatt Resilience Group at UNSW and NeuRA, and Lead of the new Mental Wellbeing Centre at NeuRA. Since 2006, she has led a mental wellbeing and resilience research program that spans neuroscience through to clinical translation, including leadership of more than 15 neuroscience, longitudinal and randomised controlled trials in young people and adults.

Associate Professor Gatt obtained her PhD in Psychology at the University of Sydney in 2005, followed by postdoctoral research in psychiatric neuroscience at the Brain Dynamics Centre, University of Sydney. She has authored more than 90 peer-reviewed publications, including a book and three book chapters. In 2014, she developed and published the COMPAS-W Wellbeing Scale, the first composite index of wellbeing, which has since been adopted in more than 30 research and clinical projects.

Her work has been recognised by multiple awards including the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research, the NHMRC Excellence Award for Top Ranked Career Development Fellowship Applicant, and the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) Success Story awarded to the WUN Resilience Group for Exceptional Levels of Achievement, for which Gatt was Lead Coordinator in a 6-site international trial in youth resilience.

Associate Professor Fullerton’s career focuses on demystifying the functioning of the human brain by improving understanding of the biological basis of mental illness. Studying genetic contributors to mental illness has the potential to reveal what happens in the development of a healthy or unhealthy brain and ultimately improve treatment and quality of life.

Associate Professor Fullerton completed her PhD in human genetics at The University of Melbourne in 2001, before completing five years post-doctoral training at The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford (UK), where she developed her interest in psychiatric genetics and complex trait analysis, studying genetic contributors to personality, depression and anxiety in humans and mice.

She returned to Australia in 2006 on a NHMRC Howard Florey Fellowship, which allowed her to join NeuRA to study the genetics of major mental illnesses, particularly bipolar disorder. In 2013, Dr Fullerton was promoted to Group Leader at NeuRA, where she heads projects in gene discovery and the role of specific genes in risk of major psychiatric conditions. She also has experience in neuroimaging, aspects of cognition and electronic health record research.

Professor Samuel Harvey is a psychiatrist and epidemiologist with a particular interest in the overlap between mental health, physical health and work.

After initially working as a general practitioner, Professor Harvey trained in both general adult and consultation liaison psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry in London. He completed his PhD with the University of London, with a thesis titled Does physical activity protect against common mental disorders? And in 2009, was awarded the UK Royal Society of Medicine Young Epidemiologist of the Year award.

Professor Harvey’s research considers the role work and workplace trauma may have in precipitating mental illness, the occupational outcomes of those already suffering from mental disorders, predictors of sickness absence and workplace based interventions for both the treatment and prevention of mental disorders. He co-leads a five year program of research at UNSW examining specific mental health problems encountered by police, fire and ambulance officers.

Professor Harvey also studies the overlap between physical and mental health, including chronic fatigue syndrome, the impact of depression on chronic medical conditions and the role of lifestyle factors in common mental disorders. He works as a consultation liaison psychiatrist at St George Hospital in Kogarah, where he runs a specialist service for patients with chronic renal disease.

Dr Michael John Murphy is a consultation liaison psychiatrist working at the Prince of Wales hospital and Orange Health Service with medical, surgical, and intensive care patients who have a co-occurring mental health difficulty such as depression, psychosis or delirium, providing expert assessment and advice to the patient, family members and health care staff.

He previously worked, and then held an honorary appointment, at the Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety and Depression (CRUfAD), a joint venture of St. Vincent’s hospital, Sydney and the School of Psychiatry at UNSW.

Dr Murphy’s PhD from the School of Psychiatry, UNSW, examined the role of internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) in the treatment of depression and/or anxiety in cancer patients, including  randomised controlled trials to evaluate iCBT in early stage and advanced stage cancer and in cancer survivors. He has also studied patient care in eating disorders, managing blood-borne viral illnesses in mental health patients, and teaching doctors how to assess patients’ decision-making capacity.

Associate Professor Julia Lappin is a psychiatrist ​​and the Clinical Director of the NSW Tertiary Referral Service for Psychosis (TRSP). She is also an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales School of Psychiatry and Mental Health. She trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, London and completed her PhD at King’s College, London, on the topic of outcomes following a first episode of psychotic illness.

Associate Professor Lappin’s research program focuses on improving outcomes for people living with psychotic illness, including people with substance use and other comorbidities. This clinical research is embedded in the TRSP, which delivers a holistic approach to care, enabling greater access to evidence-based interventions, including psychological, psychosocial and physical health treatments.

Adith Mohan is a consultant neuropsychiatrist at the Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI), Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, Australia. He is also a Research Fellow with the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), and a Senior Lecturer with the School of Psychiatry, UNSW.

Dr Mohan’s research interests include novel pharmacological interventions in neuropsychiatry, the study of human brain transcriptome changes related to ageing, as well as therapeutic neuromodulation in neuropsychiatric disorders. He currently leads a clinical trial investigating the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in mild cognitive impairment and is involved in studies of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in Tourette syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

He is actively involved in the Section of Neuropsychiatry (SoN) of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, is the jurisdictional representative for the state of New South Wales on the SoN, and is involved in the development of a competency based training curriculum for Neuropsychiatry.

Iain has a significant Australian and international reputation in child and adolescent mental health including pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry Editorial Board, the ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation, the Sydney Partnership in Health, Education, and Enterprise (SPHERE), and NSW Health’s Systems Information and Analytics and Higher Education branches.

Dr Perkes’ clinical research portfolio includes OCD, behavioural neuroscience, neuroimaging, and child and adolescent mental health services. In 2002 he established and leads the Kids Research Mental Health initiative and the NSW-wide paediatric OCD Bounce clinical research translation service within the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network as part of a national collaboration.

Simon Rosenbaum is an academic exercise physiologist and Scientia Associate Professor in the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, UNSW Sydney.

Simon’s research focuses on physical activity, trauma and mental illness, including physical health co-morbidities. He has published more than 230 peer-reviewed publications including a textbook and a Lancet Commission. He is the President of the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, co-chair of the Olympic Refuge Foundation Think Tank on sport and humanitarian settings, and an Associate Editor of the journal, Mental Health and Physical Activity.

Simon has led international research and capacity building projects, including working in the Rohingya refugee crises in Bangladesh, and has consulted to the United Nations Migration Agency in North-east Nigeria. Since 2019, he has been recognised by the Clarivate Highly Cited list for mental health.

Dr Grace McKeon is an Exercise Physiologist and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her work focuses on the role of physical activity to improve the health of populations exposed to trauma including emergency service workers, refugees and asylum seekers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. She has led the design, implementation and evaluation of digital lifestyle interventions, using a range of methodologies including co-design participatory research methods, qualitative and quantitative research. Grace has contributed to 23 publications including 21 peer-reviewed papers and two book chapters, with 16 of these as first author, and is a named applicant on more than $2 million of competitive funding.

Hamish is the Translational Research Lead for Mindgardens, working with research leads and clinical services to implement research into practice at the system and service levels. In addition to supporting the strategic development of the organisation, Hamish was appointed in 2022 to lead the future direction and management of the Mindgardens Psychosis Flagship and its research portfolio.

In addition to completing a PhD with the UNSW Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hamish has worked clinically as a mental health exercise physiologist and in health services management as a quality improvement advisor. He currently holds a Conjoint Senior Lecturer position with UNSW, Sydney.

Dr Hodgins is a Senior Research Associate at the School of Women’s and Children’s Health at UNSW. His research experience reflects a keen interest in qualitative methods and knowledge translation. He has more than eight years’ experience conducting qualitative research in healthcare, with a specific passion for arts-based and innovative methodologies. This work has included exploring health priorities and knowledge translation in community-based palliative care, knowledge translation in youth health, the delivery of mental health services to rural populations, and the evaluation of health implementation initiatives. He holds a PhD from Western Sydney University, and a Masters in Qualitative Health Research at The University of Sydney.