Congratulations to Dr Anne-Marie Swan, the 2026 NSW Branch Meritorious Service Award winner

The RANZCP NSW Branch is honoured to posthumously award the 2026 Meritorious Service Award to Dr Anne-Marie Swan. The award recognises her significant, sustained and distinguished contribution to psychotherapy training and psychiatric education in New South Wales over many decades. Dr Swan passed away on 25 July 2026.

Dr Swan trained first as a teacher, completing a BA, a Diploma of Education and a Master of Education, and taught English and Humanities for several years. In her mid-30s she decided to study medicine at the University of Newcastle. She went on to train in psychiatry, gained her Fellowship and then specialised in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She combines a teacher’s curiosity and patience with a psychiatrist’s clinical rigour, and that combination shaped everything she gave to the profession.

Dr Swan served two terms as President of the NSW Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from 2013 to 2016 and from 2019 to 2021. For over a decade Dr Swan was the formal Psychotherapy Supervisor within South Eastern Sydney Local Health District, and she held the same role at Concord. Through this work she trained a generation of psychiatrists in psychotherapeutic practice.

Colleagues and former trainees remember her extraordinary capacity to listen, question and make people think. She could challenge them, always with warmth and humour, but she never let them settle for a superficial answer. She believed that becoming a psychiatrist was about more than acquiring knowledge. It was also about finding your clinical identity and your people. She encouraged trainees to keep talking to each other, to argue about ideas and to support one another through training, and many have carried that with them throughout their careers.

In 2011, Dr Swan presented to Australian psychiatrists on the therapeutic role of dogs in psychiatric practice. She drew on her own experience of working with her dog, Fabio, in private practice with patients experiencing depression, bereavement and psychosis. The Sydney Morning Herald reported the work nationally. It reflected a hallmark of her practice: she took ideas seriously enough to test them in the room, and she was generous enough to share what she found.

In nominating her, Professor Jackie Curtis AM FRANZCP wrote that Dr Swan was ‘far more interested in the people she was training than in her own recognition’. This award formally recognises the contribution she made as a clinician, teacher, mentor and leader.

The NSW Branch extends its deepest sympathies to Dr Swan’s family, friends and colleagues.