Keynote Speaker
Dr. William R Beardslee
Dr. William Beardslee is the Gardner-Monks Professor of Child Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and directs the Baer Prevention Initiatives at Children’s Hospital Boston. He has a longstanding interest generally in the prevention of mental illness and specifically in the prevention of depression in families. His Family Talk Intervention has been widely used in the United States and abroad as a preventive program for parents with depression and their children. He served as a member of the recent IOM Committee on the Prevention of Mental Disorders.
COPMI Keynote Speakers
Professor Clemens Hosman
Prof. Clemens M. H. Hosman is Professor in Mental Health Promotion and Prevention of Mental Disorders at the Universities of Nijmegen and Maastricht, the Netherlands. During the last twenty five years he wrote many publications on different aspects of prevention and prevention research, such as on needs assessment methods, goal analysis, prevention theories, classification of interventions, quality management, program evaluation, effectiveness and effect management, prevention of depression and of relationship problems, and long term policies in prevention and mental health promotion. He is chairman of the European WHO Task Force on Mental Health Promotion and Prevention, chairman of the Clifford Beers Foundation and member of the European Community Psychology Network, the European Mental Health Promotion Network, the Prevention Research and Policy Faculty of the World Federation of Mental Health, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology: Editorial Board and consultant of the European Mental Health Policy Network.
Melina Marchetta
Melina Marchetta lives in Sydney and writes full time. Her first novel, Looking for Alibrandi, was released in 1992 to much acclaim, with a first print-run sellout within two months of its release. Published in 14 countries, including 11 translated editions, it swept the pool of literary awards for young adult fiction in 1993, including the coveted Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Award (Older Readers). Dubbed “the most stolen library book”, the popular novel was followed by her film adaptation of the same title released in 2000.While writing the AFI award-winning screenplay, Melina taught English and History full time, for ten consecutive years, at a city high school for boys.
During that time she released her second novel, Saving Francesca, in 2003, with the central character, Francesca, living in a family with parental depression. This was followed by On the Jellicoe Road in 2006. Both novels have been published in more than 6 countries, with Saving Francesca translated into 4 languages. Her current novel - the fantasy epic, Finnikin of the Rock - was recently released by Penguin Australia in October 2008. Melina has also written reviews and opinion pieces for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and The Australian Literary Review, and has been a writer-in-residence around the country, as far north as Thursday Island and as far south as Hobart. She is currently working on her fifth novel, The Piper’s Son.
COPMI National Family Forum (CNFF)
This diverse group of 9 consumers, carers and young carers with a broad range of perspectives and experiences has been brought together from across Australia. The role of CNFF members is to inform the national COPMI Team on consumer and carer perspectives across all areas of the COPMI national initiative. They are also a conduit for gathering and sharing information across networks and promotion of the national COPMI initiative. The current CNFF members are Alexandra Athanasiadis, Joanne Cook, Margaret Cook, Beth Daws, Fiona Demunck, Lorna Downes, William Heggblum, Wayne Oldfield and Deborah Ross.
CAMH Keynote Speakers
Professor Louise Newman
Louise Newman has been appointed as Professor of Developmental Psychiatry and Director of the Monash University Centre for Developmental Psychiatry & Psychology since March 2009. Prior to this appointment she was the Chair of Perinatal and Infant Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle and the previous Director of the New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry. Professor Newman is a practicing infant psychiatrist with expertise in the area of disorders of early parenting and attachment difficulties in infants. She has undertaken research into the issues confronting parents with borderline personality disorder and histories of early trauma and the impact on infant neurobiological and psychological development. Her current research is focussing on the evaluation of infant-parent interventions in highrisk populations, the concept of parental reflective functioning in mothers with borderline disorders and the neurobiology of parenting disturbance.
Professor Newman is involved in the education of psychiatrists and a range of mental health professionals in the areas of attachment theory, psychoanalytic and development theory and infant-parent psychotherapies.
Professor Newman is involved in advocacy for refugees and asylum seekers and is the Convener of the Alliance of Health Professional for asylum seekers. She represents the RANZCP on issues relating to asylum seekers mental health.
Professor Brett McDermott
Brett McDermott is an Australian graduate and trained in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry in the UK and Sydney. Current appointments are the Director of the Mater Child and Youth Mental Health Service in Brisbane and Associate Professor at the University of Queensland. Professor McDermott is also a By-Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge University; the Foundation Director of the Eating Disorders Team at the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children; scientific convenor of the 2006 IACAPAP World Congress and a member of the Australian National Mental Health Disaster Response Committee. In 2006 Professor McDermott was made a Director of the Australian depression initiative, Beyond Blue. Clinical and research areas include children and adolescents with eating disorders, emotional trauma and service provision implications of tertiary child mental health services.
Professor Beverley Raphael
Professor Raphael (AM,MBBS,MD,FRANZCP,FASSA, FRCPsych, Hon.MD (N’cle, NSW)) is Professor of Psychological Medicine, ANU Medical School, The Canberra Hospital; Professor of Population Mental Health and Disasters & Director, University of Western Sydney and Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry, the University of Queensland.
She is a long term advocate for mental health programs for children and has developed a number of programs in this field as well as carrying out extensive research. She is the Chair of the Australian Child Trauma Loss and Grief Network at ANU Medical School as well as being the expert mental health advisor of the Australian Medical Associations Child Health and Public Health Committees and is the current chair of the National Mental Health Disaster Taskforce - Child and Adolescent Working Group. She is also a member of faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry with RANZCP.
She also has a long-term involvement and expertise in research and management in the area of trauma, grief and disasters, and more recently response to terrorism and its mental health correlates and consequences. She is the author of The Anatomy of Bereavement (1983), When Disaster Strikes (1986), co-editor of the International Handbook of Traumatic Stress Studies (1993), co-editor of the Handbook of Preventative Psychiatry (1995) and co-editor of Psychological Debriefing: Theory, practice and evidence (2000), as well as numerous scientific articles.