Patrick McGorry

 "As Australia of the year, I am hoping that 2010 will see a fundamental shift towards transformational change in mental health. We need a system of care that is fully re-engineered, with substantial investment growth, Federal intervention and early intervention as a core feature. I want to see new professional fields of youth mental health and a paradigm of early intervention in psychiatry developed and sustained. I want to mobilize and sustain a large scale or mass movement of the diaspora of people with mental ill health in Australia for years to come to ensure that progress is continuous, not desultory."

Professor Patrick McGorry is a leading international researcher, clinician and advocate for the youth mental health reform agenda. He is Executive Director of Orygen Youth Health (OYH), a world-renowned mental health organisation for young people that has put Australia at the forefront of innovation in the prevention and treatment of mental illness. OYH targets the needs of young people with emerging serious mental illness, including first-episode psychosis and has become the model upon which many other youth mental health services in the world are based.

Professor McGorry is also a founding board member of headspace, the National Youth Mental Health Foundation. He believes that early intervention offers the greatest hope for recovery and therefore takes every opportunity to educate the community to recognise the early signs of mental illness, without stigmatising or discriminating. His extraordinary 27-year contribution to the improvement of the youth mental health sector has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of young people the world over.

Professor McGorry graduated from the University of Sydney in 1977 and began psychiatric training in Newcastle in 1981. In 1992, he was appointed Director of the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC) at Parkville, Victoria. He became Director for Young People’s Mental Health – now ORYGEN – in 1996 and initiated headspace in 2006. His work has spawned early intervention for psychosis in Ireland, the UK, Canada and the US.

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