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Destiny Kynuna
Dr Destiny Kynuna
PGY2, Broome WA
Attending the Psychiatry Interest Forum retreat in Sydney (Gadigal) on 22 and 23 April was one of the most meaningful professional experiences of my PGY2 year — and one that arrived at exactly the right moment. As a proud Wunumara woman who grew up in Yarrabah in Far North Queensland, who now calls Broome home with my partner, a proud Nyul Nyul man, and our two year old son, I came to medicine carrying a deep understanding of what it looks like when communities are underserved. Psychiatry has always felt like where I belong. But since falling in love with rural medicine in the Kimberley, I had been sitting with a quiet uncertainty about whether rural psychiatry could be what I imagined it to be. This retreat answered that.
The experience that will stay with me longest was hearing Ezra speak about her lived experience of dissociative identity disorder (DID). I will be honest, I had not believed DID was a real condition. What moved me was not just what they described but how they described it. They were calm, grounded, almost matter of fact. There was no performance of suffering. Their composure felt like testimony to what genuine recovery and self-understanding can look like, and it quietly dismantled assumptions I did not realise I was holding.
Dr Alice Dwyer's presentation on perinatal and infant psychiatry then gave me the framework to understand how a brain arrives at a place like Ezra's. Her work on adverse childhood experiences and the formative impact of early trauma on the developing mind made something click, particularly as someone who has watched community carry intergenerational wounds for generations. Dr Stephen Rosenman's presentation, Postcards from the Philosophical Edge of Psychiatry, then invited me to sit with bigger questions about the nature of mind and what psychiatry is truly doing when it enters someone's inner world. It was the kind of thinking that reminds you why this specialty matters.
As a medical student I completed an elective in forensic psychiatry and it compelled me in a way I have never forgotten. The intersection of mental illness and the justice system sits close to my heart because I have seen firsthand how many Aboriginal people end up in prison carrying untreated mental illness and unprocessed trauma, without the correct support or understanding. That is not justice. I believe psychiatry, practised with cultural humility and genuine connection to community, is one of the most powerful tools we have to change that.
This retreat has deepened my conviction and sharpened my direction. I will be applying for RANZCP training through a rural pathway next year, with the goal of serving communities like the ones that made me, bringing together my clinical training, my forensic interest, and the cultural grounding that has always been my greatest strength.
Attending the Psychiatry Interest Forum retreat in Sydney (Gadigal) on 22 and 23 April was one of the most meaningful professional experiences of my PGY2 year — and one that arrived at exactly the right moment. As a proud Wunumara woman who grew up in Yarrabah in Far North Queensland, who now calls Broome home with my partner, a proud Nyul Nyul man, and our two year old son, I came to medicine carrying a deep understanding of what it looks like when communities are underserved. Psychiatry has always felt like where I belong. But since falling in love with rural medicine in the Kimberley, I had been sitting with a quiet uncertainty about whether rural psychiatry could be what I imagined it to be. This retreat answered that.
The experience that will stay with me longest was hearing Ezra speak about her lived experience of dissociative identity disorder (DID). I will be honest, I had not believed DID was a real condition. What moved me was not just what they described but how they described it. They were calm, grounded, almost matter of fact. There was no performance of suffering. Their composure felt like testimony to what genuine recovery and self-understanding can look like, and it quietly dismantled assumptions I did not realise I was holding.
Dr Alice Dwyer's presentation on perinatal and infant psychiatry then gave me the framework to understand how a brain arrives at a place like Ezra's. Her work on adverse childhood experiences and the formative impact of early trauma on the developing mind made something click, particularly as someone who has watched community carry intergenerational wounds for generations. Dr Stephen Rosenman's presentation, Postcards from the Philosophical Edge of Psychiatry, then invited me to sit with bigger questions about the nature of mind and what psychiatry is truly doing when it enters someone's inner world. It was the kind of thinking that reminds you why this specialty matters.
As a medical student I completed an elective in forensic psychiatry and it compelled me in a way I have never forgotten. The intersection of mental illness and the justice system sits close to my heart because I have seen firsthand how many Aboriginal people end up in prison carrying untreated mental illness and unprocessed trauma, without the correct support or understanding. That is not justice. I believe psychiatry, practised with cultural humility and genuine connection to community, is one of the most powerful tools we have to change that.
This retreat has deepened my conviction and sharpened my direction. I will be applying for RANZCP training through a rural pathway next year, with the goal of serving communities like the ones that made me, bringing together my clinical training, my forensic interest, and the cultural grounding that has always been my greatest strength.
