Ethics and Mental Health (PDF)

Clinical Associate Professor Michael Robertson is a community-based psychiatrist with special expertise in civil forensic psychiatry. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on ethics, psychological trauma, and philosophical aspects of psychiatry. His PhD examined ethics and PTSD and in 2009 he was appointed Clinical Associate Professor of psychiatric ethics at the University of Sydney, where he coordinates the mental health ethics unit of study in the Sydney Bioethics Program. His varied research interests include values-based practice, involuntary psychiatric treatment, and the practice of psychiatry in Nazi Germany.

Professor Garry Walter is Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Sydney and is also Clinical Director of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Northern Sydney Local Health District, and long-standing Editor of the journal Australasian Psychiatry. Professor Walter has published over 300 articles and has won a number of key research awards. His major research interests are in mood disorders in young people, physical treatments in psychiatry, genocide and severe trauma, psychiatric stigma, use and abuse of media, publishing processes and ethics. His PhD was on the use of electroconvulsive therapy in the young. In 2012, Professor Walter was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to medicine.