Scientia Professor Gordon Parker

I am an academic psychiatrist specialising in mood disorders, with a particular interest in the optimal ways to model and account for heterogeneity in both their diagnosis and treatment.

I am currently a Scientia Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). I have worked for over 50 years as a clinician and researcher, in which I have been the founder and executive director of the Black Dog Institute, Head of the School of Psychiatry at UNSW, director of the Divisions of Psychiatry at Prince of Wales and Prince Henry Hospitals, editor-in-chief of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, and the recipient of multiple competitive grants from government and private organisations. Recently, I was awarded the prestigious James Cook model from the Royal Society of New South Wales and was the recipient of the 2020 Australian Mental Health Prize.

My recent research efforts have been devoted to elucidating precise definitions and the clinical differentiation of mood disorders and related conditions, thus leading to the development of properly tailored management options and customised intervention models. I have particularly applied these to the study of the clinical syndromes of burnout and melancholia (as distinct from depression), and bipolar disorder subtypes (as distinct from each other and from personality and psychotic disorders).