INTHEBLACK Mental Health 2021 - Magazine - Page 9
STORY JOHANNA LEGGATT
AT A
GLANCE
Patrick McGorry has
modernised Australia’s
approach to mental
health through a focus
on early intervention
and humane,
community-based
treatment.
He established the
hugely successful
headspace centres
across Australia,
offering mental health
support for youth. The
model has been
replicated in a dozen
countries globally.
McGorry makes a
strong business case
for investing in and
prioritising mental
health in the
workplace.
GOOD
HEADSPACE
AU ST R A LI A N OF T H E Y EA R, RES EA RCHER A ND RE NOWNED PSYC HIATR IST
PAT R ICK M C GORRY I S ON A M I S S I ON TO CONV I NC E THE B U SINESS C O MMU NITY
OF T H E I M P ORTA N C E OF P RI ORI TI S I NG M ENTA L HEALTH.
P
atrick McGorry concedes he is very
much a product of his era.
Australia’s most prominent psychiatrist
describes himself as a reformer, a trait he
attributes to the tenor of the times in which
he grew up.
He was 15 when he moved with his
family from the UK to Australia in 1968.
It is a period often referred to as the Year
of Revolutions, in which activists agitated
for social change across many parts of
the globe, including in the US, France,
Germany and former Czechoslovakia.
The reformist sentiment gripped the
young McGorry.
“I was an idealistic teenager,” says
McGorry, who is now director of the
Orygen Specialist Program in Victoria,
Australia and a professor of youth mental
health at the University of Melbourne.
“I was very influenced by those protests
as a young person; I guess I was looking
for a cause in my life and a way of making
change.”
McGorry’s father was a doctor, and he
notes “there is a lot of pressure in Irish
families to choose a ‘safe’ career”.
He was deeply interested in the plight
of the mentally ill and considered studying
psychiatry, but was initially deterred by the
institutional and backward approach to
treating patients.
“I just couldn’t work in those mental
hospitals, so I put it off and worked as
a GP [general practitioner] instead,”
McGorry says.
EARLY INTERVENTION
Then, in the late 1970s, fate intervened.
While McGorry was working as GP in the
city of Newcastle in New South Wales, a
newly established and forward-thinking
local medical school was established, led by
a leading professor of psychiatry, the late
Beverley Raphael.
“She was warm and caring, and contrasted
greatly to the standard approach at the time,”
McGorry reflects.
“I saw then that there was a way to do
psychiatry training that could lead to a
humane approach, and maybe even help
people who were mentally ill.”
McGorry moved to Melbourne in the
mid-1980s and helped set up a clinical
research unit at the Royal Melbourne
Hospital – Royal Park Campus. Once
again, he found himself frustrated by the
antiquated approach, especially towards
young people suffering psychosis and
schizophrenia.
“The mindset was that they were all
doomed, and yet I could see a good life
was possible for those young people,”
McGorry says.
“My fellow researchers and I could see
the potential for optimism and reform in
the treatment of mentally ill youth.”
In 1992, McGorry set up the Early
Psychosis Prevention and Intervention
Centre (EPPIC), which achieved great
results based on early intervention,
community-based teams and home-based
care of the mentally ill.
Over the following decade, McGorry
broadened the remit of the early
intervention service model to focus on
the full range of disorders in young people,
including mood, personality and substance
use disorders.
This evolved into the establishment
of the research and clinical service
institute Orygen, where McGorry is
executive director to this day, as well
as the pioneering treatment program,
headspace, which offers on-the-ground
help for youth in need. The program has
been rolled out to more than 100 locations
across Australia, as well as a dozen other
countries including Ireland, the US,
Canada, Denmark and Israel.
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