14th International Mental Health Conference

• Professor Philip LP Morris - President Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association

• 

• 
  Prof Morris has medical qualifications MBBS (Hons), BSc(med) (Hons), and PhD. He is qualified in psychiatry and addiction medicine in Australia and is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (FRANZCP) and a Fellow of the Australasian Chapter of Addiction Medicine (FAChAM) of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP). He is qualified in general adult psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry in the USA and is Board Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN).

  He is a Certified Independent Medical Examiner (CIME) with the American Board of Independent Medical Examiners (ABIME). Prof Morris is Vice President and a Distinguished Fellow and Board Director of the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatry.
  
  Prof Morris is Medical Director of Mirikai, a young adult drug and alcohol rehabilitation program on the Gold Coast, and is Medical Director of the Gold Coast – Tweed Memory Disorders Clinic. He has a private psychiatric and medico-legal practice on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane. He is a member of the Repatriation Pharmaceutical Reference Committee.

  Prof Morris is Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Forensic Excellence, Bond University. Prof Morris has held professor positions in psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland, and at the School of Health Sciences at Bond University. At the University of Melbourne he was chairman of the Department of Psychiatry Research Committee. He has been Medical Superintendent of Macquarie Psychiatric Hospital, North Ryde NSW, and Director of Mental Health for the Gold Coast District Health Service. He was the Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Post Traumatic Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. He has been a member of the Queensland Compensation Commission (Q-Comp) Medical Assessment Tribunal – Psychiatric, and was chairman of the RANZCP Continuing Professional Development Subcommittee.

  His clinical and research interests include the psychiatric care of adult patients, medical and surgical patients (consultation–liaison psychiatry), neuropsychiatry/psycho geriatrics, post-trauma syndromes, clinical drug trials, and co morbid drug and alcohol and psychiatric conditions. Prof Morris undertook post-graduate research and clinical training in the USA. He has published many scientific articles and reports and has won a number of competitive government research grants as well as pharmaceutical industry support for drug trials. He is an external assessor for the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

  Prof Morris has extensive experience in medico-legal assessment for a range of legal jurisdictions. Prof Morris is trained in the application of the American Medical Association Guides for the Assessment of Permanent Impairment, the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale (PIRS), the Comcare Permanent Impairment Guides, and the Guide to the Assessment of Rates of Veteran Pensions (GARP).

Professor Philip Mitchell AM MB BS, MD, FRANZCP, FRCPsych.  Professor and Head of the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales; Convenor of Brain Sciences UNSW; Chair of the NSW Mental Health Priority Taskforce; Consultant Psychiatrist, Black Dog Institute, Sydney; Guest Professor, Shanghai Jaitong University; and Board Member of the Anika Foundation.

His research and clinical interests are in bipolar disorder and depression, with a particular focus on the molecular genetics of bipolar disorder, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for depression, and the pharmacological and psychological treatment of bipolar disorder and depression.

Professor Mitchell has published (in conjunction with colleagues) over 370 papers or chapters on these topics and is a member of an NHMRC-funded Program Grant on depression and bipolar disorder. He is an assistant editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry and Therapeutic Advances in Chronic Disease and Neuropsychiatry. He also serves on the editorial boards of Psychiatric Genetics, CNS Drugs, CNS Spectrums, Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, Current Therapeutic Research and Medicine Today.

In 2002 Professor Mitchell was awarded the Senior Research Award of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. In 2004, he received the Founders Medal of the Australasian Society for Psychiatry Research. In 2009 he was appointed a Scientia Professor, UNSW (2009-2014), for his international eminence in research. Professor Mitchell also serves on the NSW Health Care Advisory Council.

He was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2010 Australia Day Honours List for service to medical education, particularly in the field of psychiatry, as an academic, researcher and practitioner, through contributions to the understanding, treatment and prevention of mental illness.

• Professor Cynthia Shannon Weickert - , BA Mphil PhD - Macquarie Group Foundation Chair of Schizophrenia Research - Faculty – Department of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales
• 
  

This is a joint position between Schizophrenia Research Institute, the University of New South Wales and Neuroscience Research Australia.

Prof Shannon Weickert's research centers on the molecular developmental neurobiology of schizophrenia. She earned a PhD in Biomedical Science at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City and completed postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Mental Health rising to the level of Unit Chief of MiNDS (Molecules in the Neurobiology and Development of Schizophrenia). Her awards include the Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award, NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence, Independent Investigator Award and two Young Investigator Awards from NARSAD. She was awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council Research Fellowship SRF A (2012-2016).

Prof Shannon Weickert has made seminal contributions to the conceptualization of schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental disorder and is best known for her pioneering work on BDNF and estrogen receptor. She has also led studies that identified the birthplace of neuronal precursors in the human brain and studies that showed the postnatal recruitment of cortical inhibitory neurons is abnormal in schizophrenia. Her other work challenges long-held assumptions about human brain development including the nature of male-female differences and saliency of synaptic pruning.

She is recognized as a world leader in molecular human cortical development and her papers are the most numerous in the field. In total, Prof Shannon Weickert has 1165 peer-reviewed papers with 38 in high impact journals (IF 6-15). To date she has a total of 4,653 cites with an h-index of 40. Her work has broad impact outside psychiatry including examining molecular mechanisms by which hormones and growth factors cooperate to control gene expression and experimental examination of how sex hormones impact social development in adolescence.

Prof Shannon Weickert is a popular international speaker with over 20 symposium presentations and with many invitations to chair. She is a full member of American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and is a Board member for Schizophrenia International Research Society. Prof Shannon Weickert is on 3 top-ranked editorial boards, Molecular Psychiatry, BioMedCentral (BMC) Genomics and the Schizophrenia Research Journal. She peer reviews for 18 journals and holds 8 professional memberships. Prof Shannon Weickert is an active reviewer for NHMRC and is on the Scientific Advisory Council for Tissue Resource Centre at University of Sydney. She provides intellectual leadership for a clinical treatment trial of raloxifene in schizophrenia. She works at the forefront of translational research approaches to personalized medicine based on subgroups of patients with schizophrenia.

Professor Michael Berk - Chair in Psychiatry at Deakin University. Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and the Mental Health Research Institute.

Professor Michael Berk is currently appointed as Chair of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, Deakin University. He is also a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and the Mental Health Research Institute, and leads the first episode bipolar program at Orygen Youth Health. He is past President of the International Society of Bipolar Disorders and the Australasian Society of Bipolar Disorders.

Professor Berk has published over 400 papers on a range of topics. His research interests include mood and psychotic disorders, particularly bipolar disorder and depression. His greatest contribution is in the discovery and implementation of novel therapies. He has published over 20 self-initiated, non-industry randomised controlled trials, predominantly in bipolar disorder. He is a past committee member of both the Collegium Internationale Psychopharmacologicum and World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry, and is a member of a number of international advisory boards. He was the founding editor of The Journal of Depression and Anxiety, is associate editor of both the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry and Early Intervention in Psychiatry, and has served as guest editor or is on the editorial board of 12 other journals as well as being a reviewer of 30 journals.

Professor Berk is the recipient of a number of grants, including a USA National Institutes of Health R34, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Centres of Clinical Research Excellence grant, NHMRC project beyondblue and Stanley Medical Research Institute awards, and is a lead investigator on the Centres of Research Excellence grant for Mental Health. He is regularly invited as a speaker at international meetings. In 2008, he was awarded the Australasian Society of Psychiatric Research Eli Lilly Oration, the Pathcare Smart Geelong Research and Learning Expo Health and Lifestyle award and the G Force Recruitment Researcher of The Year award for this work. In 2009 he received a commendation in the Ministers Award for Mental Health.

B Med Sci (Hons), MBBS, MD, Hon.DLitt W.Aust., FRCPath, FRCPA, FAA, FTSE

Professor Masters has focused his career on research in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. His work over the last 35 years is widely acknowledged as having had a major influence on Alzheimer's disease research world-wide. This work has led to the continued development of novel diagnostics and therapeutic strategies.
Professor Masters is currently the Executive Director of the Mental Health Research Institute, and a Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. He is also the Senior Deputy Director of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, the Head of the Mental Health Division at the Florey and a consultant at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

His achievements have been recognised by the receipt of many international awards - including the Potamkin Prize (1990), the Max Planck Research Award (1992), the Zülch Prize (1995), the King Faisal Prize (1996), the Alois Alzheimer Award (1998), the Lennox K Black Prize (2006), the Grand Hamdan Award (2006) and the Victoria Prize (2007), CSIRO Medal for Research Achievement (2011).

Professor, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales. CEO & Scientific Director, Schizophrenia Research Institute

Vaughan Carr graduated in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1972 and received his training in psychiatry at the University of Rochester (1974-78) and Yale University (1978-80) in the USA.   After 8 years as an academic psychiatrist at the University of Adelaide, he took up the position of Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle in 1989 and Director, Hunter New England Mental Health Services from 1997 to 2005. He was Founding Director of the Hunter Institute of Mental Health in Newcastle from 1992 to 1997, and President of the Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research (ASPR) in 1997-98. In 1999 he became Founding Director of Newcastle’s Centre for Mental Health Studies, a multi-disciplinary organisation for research, education and service evaluation in mental health, which in 2006 merged with neurosciences under his leadership to become a Priority Research Centre of the University of Newcastle, the Centre for Brain and Mental Health Research.

He was appointed Scientific Director of the Schizophrenia Research Institute in 2004 and the Institute’s Chief Executive Officer in 2007, positions that he continues to hold. Vaughan Carr is a recipient of the ASPR Organon Research Award (1987), the ASPR Novartis Oration (2003), and the ASPR Founders’ Medal (2006). He is the lead investigator of a national schizophrenia research bio-bank involving collaborators in four states and lead investigator on a population-based longitudinal study of children. He has publications in the areas of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, early psychosis, depression, post-traumatic stress, mental health care delivery in general practice, child psychiatry, cognitive neuroscience, genetics, mental health service evaluation, alcohol and drug abuse, psychotherapy and health economics. He is currently Professor of Schizophrenia Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of New South Wales.

Director, Centre for Health Practice Innovation, Griffith Health Institute, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University

Professor Wendy Moyle is the Director of the Centre for Health Practice Innovation, a research program in the Griffith Health Institute at Griffith University.

Wendy’s research focus has been on improving quality of life for people with dementia and finding evidence for the management of BPSD.  She is a member of the World Health Organization Consultation Group on the Classification of Behavioural and Psychological Symptoms in Neurocognitive disorders for ICD-11.

Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, University of Wollongong

Professor Brin Grenyer is a practicing clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology. He is also a senior clinical researcher and supervisor at Northfields Clinic and provides clinical, consulting and research services across NSW Health and to the non-government mental health and drug and alcohol sector. Professor Grenyer’s research program focuses on the treatment of chronic and complex psychological problems, including personality disorders, chronic depression, aggression and violence, early attachment relationships, chronic lifestyle diseases and substance dependence.

Over the past fourteen years he has led psychotherapy clinics both for personality disorder and depression, with over 1000 patients enrolled in treatment and research. He has been awarded over 30 grants totaling more than $8 million, has published over 100 peer review journal articles book chapers and books, has supervised over 20 Doctoral graduates, and has been invited to present over 35 invited international and keynote presentations.

He is coordinator of the Australia Area Group of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, including being local host of the 2013 International Congress in July in Brisbane, Australia. He was scientific committee member for the 6th World Congress of Psychotherapy, Sydney August 2011 and International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders 12th International Congress in Melbourne in March 2011. He was a member of the NHMRC Borderline Personality Disorder Guideline Development Committee, and is an Advisory Editor for Psychotherapy Research.  He is also foundation Chair of the Psychology Board of Australia and was Chair of the 4th International Congress on Licensure, Certification and Credentialing in Psychology, Sydney 2010 and is on the organising committee of the 5th Congress in Stockholm, 2013. He is currently directing the Project Air Strategy for Personality Disorders (www.projectairstrategy.org).