RANZCP members recognised in King’s Birthday 2024 Honours List

The RANZCP is pleased to announce that five psychiatrists have been recognised in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours Lists for their outstanding service to mental health, psychiatry, and the community.  

We thank them for their significant and tireless efforts to improve the mental health of our communities.  

Congratulations to all!  

Dr Murray Wright

Dr Murray Wright PSM was awarded the Public Service Medal (PSM) for outstanding public service to psychiatric and mental health care in NSW. 

Murray is a graduate of the University of Sydney, and achieved RANZCP Fellowship in 1990, and was awarded the Maddison Medal that year. He was appointed Honorary Secretary to the College Quality Assurance Committee (1990-1995), as his Dissertation proposing a model for CME in psychiatry was adopted and implemented by the College. Other College activities included Observer, Board of Practice Standards (1991-95), Convenor, NSW Branch Consultation-Liaison Interest Group (1991-94), Member RANZCP Committee for Exams (1996-2002), Member RANZCP Fellowships Board Training and Exemptions Subcommittee (1996-2005), Member NSW Branch Rural Psychiatry Project Steering Committee (2002-2008), Observer NSW Branch Training Committee (2008-13), Chair NSW Psychiatry State Training Council, (2007-13).

Murray has worked in a range of metropolitan, rural and regional centres, as a clinical psychiatrist, and in leadership roles, and since October 2014, as NSW Chief Psychiatrist, which has seen him take on statewide leadership roles in service improvement and managing the mental health response to disasters such as the 2019-20 bushfires, the COVID pandemic, and the more recent tragedy at Bondi Junction. 

His clinical interests include consultation-liaison psychiatry, emergency psychiatry, quality and safety improvement, psychiatric and substance misuse comorbidity, and psychiatric impairment among health professionals and police officers. He has worked extensively with the NSW Medical Council for almost 30 years, and he has also worked over many years with NSW Police, providing clinical advice and support to the Negotiation and Fixated Persons Units.

Associate Professor Carolyn Quadrio

Associate Professor Carolyn Quadrio was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) For significant service to psychiatry as a clinician, academic and mentor. 

Professor Quadrio grew up in a migrant family with a single mother and had the benefit of free education, without which she may not have made it into the world of medicine.    

She is Adjunct Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales. She practices in Forensic and Child and Family Psychiatry, particularly related to intrafamilial violence and its impact on victims and children.   

She is well known as a teacher and supervisor in individual psychotherapy, and in child and family therapy, and for her work in women’s mental health and in introducing a feminist and gender analysis to mainstream psychiatry in Australia.  Her research has been on women in psychiatry, as patients and as practitioners; sexual abuse of patients in therapy; and the long-term sequelae of family violence and childhood sexual abuse, including in religious institutions.    

Professor Brett McDermott

Professor Brett Michael McDermott was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to medicine in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. 

 Professor McDermott is a graduate of the University of Tasmania (1984). After a commission with the Royal Australian Navy, he trained in psychiatry in the UK and Australia, and child and adolescent psychiatry in Sydney and Newcastle, NSW. Academic appointments include Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Tasmania, By-Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Adjunct Professor at James Cook University.  

 For the last 25 years, Professor McDermott has held dual roles in directing public CAMH services and undertaking the activities of a clinical academic. Service highlights include the ‘Lead-Clinician’ of WA CAMHS and the Founding Director of the CAMHS Eating Disorders Team at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Perth.  From 20022014 Professor McDermott was the Executive Director of the Mater Child and Youth Mental Health Service, Brisbane. This included the creation and expansion of an adolescent drug and alcohol service, perinatal and infant, CAMHS inpatient and day program services.  

 Professor McDermott was the co-author of Evolve Therapeutic Service for children in out-of-home care. Research includes over 100 peer-reviewed publications, mainly in the areas of disaster mental health, eating disorders, adverse child experiences, and CAMHS service provision.  

 From 20062016 Professor McDermott was a Board Director of Beyond Blue, the national depression initiative, and has served on numerous state and federal expert groups and guideline initiatives. Current appointments include Specialty Director Tasmania CAMHS with oversight of the CAMHS reform undertaken by the Tasmanian Health Service, Board Member of Hand-n-Hand Peer Support and Tasmania DOAT of RANZCP CAMHS training and RANZCP FCAP Committee. 

Conjoint Professor Jacqueline Curtis

Conjoint Professor Jackie Curtis who was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to medicine, particularly as a mental health clinician and researcher.   

 Prof Jackie Curtis was appointed inaugural Executive Director of the Mindgardens Neuroscience Network 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. 

 Prof Curtis 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, Professor Curtis is also a Conjoint Professor in the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health at UNSW Sydney. In 2023 she was the recipient of the prestigious RANZCP Margaret Tobin Award.

 

 

Dr George Foster

Dr George Bryan Foster was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to the Jewish community of New South Wales. 

 Dr Foster retired from his psychiatric practice of 35 years 15 years ago, having spent 10 years as a Community Psychiatrist and the rest in private practice. In the 1970s, he was part of a committee of the Richmond Report advising on moving patients into community living. Upon his retirement, Dr Foster expanded his involvement in the Jewish community both within the Holocaust Survivors Association (his parents were survivors) and his local synagogue supporting the community particularly through the COVID pandemic. 

Born in Hungary in 1946, Dr Foster emigrated to Sydney, Australia in 1947. He was a member of Apex Australia 19761987 and a Life Member of Caringbah-Cronulla Apex Club. Over the years he served on the Board of Directors of the Sydney Jewish Museum, as a Member of Executive of New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Chair of Holocaust Remembrance Committee, and as a Deputy of the NSW Board of Deputies who he represented on the Civil Chaplaincies Advisory Committee for 11 years. 

Dr Foster is currently President of Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants, a position he has held for 15 years. 

He is also currently President of Southern Sydney Synagogue, a position he has held for 11 years and was awarded Life Membership in 2021. 

Dr Foster remains passionate and enthusiastic about his work for the Jewish Community. He is humbled and gratified that his efforts have made a difference. 

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