Mental Health

Caroline Donovan is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor within the School of Applied Psychology and the Centre for Mental Health at Griffith University. She has received over $9 million worth of funding throughout her career and has published 13 book chapters and 95 peer reviewed journal articles. She is an Associate Editor of Anxiety, Stress and Coping, and is currently on the Editorial Boards of Child Psychiatry and Human Development and Australian Psychologist.

Govind is a clinical psychologist and senior academic at the University of Southern Queensland and a member of the Manna Institute (Regional Mental Health Research and Training Institute). He has over 15 years of experience in child and youth mental health services in both private and public settings. Govind’s research focuses on improving equity and access to mental healthcare for priority groups of children, youth and their families.

Dr Talia Carl is an early-career researcher and Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Sydney. Her doctoral research involved experimental and longitudinal studies examining the relationship between moral development, parenting and context on children’s lie telling and problem behaviours. She has also managed a number of large-scale clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of interventions for children’s mental health. Her research aims to understand the factors that impact child emotional and behavioural problems, and treatment response, in order to facilitate the development and implementation of interventions. She is also passionate about increasing access to evidence-based interventions to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all Australian children.

Professor Jennie Hudson is the Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Black Dog Institute and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia. Jennie’s research focuses on understanding the factors that contribute to children’s mental health and working to improve the services available to children experiencing anxiety and other related disorders. Jennie has authored over 200 publications in the field of child mental health.

Dr Prior is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Prevention and Early Intervention in Mental Illness and Substance Use Centre of Research Excellence (PREMISE), at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on the co-occurrence of mental health and substance use disorders. She has helped design and coordinate two clinical trials of novel interventions for these comorbid disorders; most recently an online early intervention for young people who drink to cope with anxiety.

It is Katrina’s aspiration to become a leading researcher in the development, evaluation and dissemination of innovative prevention and early intervention programs for co-occurring anxiety and alcohol use problems.

Dr Gemma Sicouri is an early career researcher and clinical psychologist at the Black Dog Institute at the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on understanding the parental and cognitive factors that contribute to children’s anxiety and related disorders to inform the development and evaluation of new and improved psychological treatments. Increasingly her research uses technology to increase the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of treatments for children with anxiety and related disorders.

Dr. Carly Johnco is a Macquarie University Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at Macquarie University. Her research is focused on understanding the cognitive and environmental mechanisms that impact the development and treatment of anxiety (and related disorders) in childhood and older age. She has published more than 55 journal articles and book chapters and received over $3.5million in research funding.

She has received several awards, including the 2019 Australian Psychological Society Early Career Research Award, 2018 Australian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Tracey Goodall Early Career Award, and 2017 Macquarie University Early Career Researcher of the Year Award.

Doctor Lauren McLellan is Director of the Centre for Emotional Health Online Treatment Programs, with expertise and special interest in understanding and effectively treating anxiety in youth. Her research aims to use technology to increase access to treatments for anxious youth, especially for those in rural and remote communities.

Her other research interests include improving outcomes of anxiety treatments by developing and evaluating novel intervention or assessment methods to identify youth that don’t respond as well as others to standard treatments. Lauren is also a clinical psychologist and lectures on the Masters of Clinical Psychology postgraduate program at Macquarie University.

Associate Professor Tim Slade is Director of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Matilda Centre for Research in Substance Use and Mental Health, University of Sydney and Program Lead, Biostatistics for the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence for Prevention of Mental Illness and Substance Misuse (PREMISE).

His research program in psychiatric epidemiology aims to improve our understanding of the prevalence, correlates and diagnostic validity of mental and substance use disorders with the aim of informing the next generation of prevention and early intervention responses.