Professor Dawn Freshwater Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia was awarded her PhD at the University of Nottingham in 1998.  Her academic contribution to the fields of Public Health (specifically Mental Health and Forensic Mental Health) and in researching Leadership practices won her the highest honour in her field - the Fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing (FRCN).  She has served as Chair of the Institutional Research Review Panel (IRRP) for Research Assessment and Impact Case Measurement and as a panel member for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) (UK).

ACMHN 2017 Orator

​Niels Buus is Professor of Mental Health Nursing at Sydney Nursing School. He is the leader of The Centre for Family-Based Mental Health Care at St. Vincent’s Hospitals Sydney. Niels is engaged in implementing and researching the resource-oriented healthcare delivery model “Open dialogue” and how it can be implemented in Australian healthcare settings.

Keynote Speaker

Dr Mark Montebello is the Medical Manager at the Drug and Alcohol Service, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District. He is a Psychiatrist, an Addiction Medicine Specialist, a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, and the New South Wales Director of Advanced Training in addiction psychiatry. His research interests focus on the development of novel treatments for substance use disorders.

Keynote Speaker

Bethne is a mental health nurse and sociologist. Bethne has taught in the University sector for over 15 years; in sociology, nursing, gender studies, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, and ethics. Bethne’s career history includes mental health nursing, palliative care, rural remote health, and psycho-oncology. She has co-ordinated a nurse-led transdiciplinary mental health therapy unit, and provided clinical supervision to mental health therapists in a range of clinical settings. She is supervising postgraduate students in research areas of mental health nursing, moral competence, cultural safety and the nursing profession, and the intersections of mental health and palliative care.

Bethne is Deputy President of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NSW). She is actively involved in the professional regulation, governance, and sustainability of the nursing profession. She shares a particular interest in the promotion of safe workplace cultures and the embedding of professional standards into everyday nursing practice.

Keynote Speaker

Mike Hazelton is Professor of Mental Health Nursing at the University of Newcastle. He has published widely on mental health, is a past Editor of the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing and a current member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. He has supervised 18 PhD students to completion, received various awards for research, and in 2003 was made a Life Member of the ACMHN. Mike has a longstanding interest in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and between 2005 and 2010 worked in treatment program offering dialectical behaviour therapy to people living with BPD. He was a member of the expert committee that guided the development of the NHMRC Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of Borderline Personality Disorder.

Keynote Speaker

​Sally Buchanan-Hagen is a Registered Nurse who works in the emergency department. She is also a Consumer Academic and Research Assistant. Sally writes for the International Bipolar Foundation and is a Youth Presenter with the Black Dog Institute. In 2016 Sally was nominated for a Youth Advocacy and Inspiration Award. Since her diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder she has been a strong advocate for mental health education, particularly mental health education for nurses.

Keynote Speaker

Karina is a Professor of Mental Health, Director of Research, CBT therapist, and NIHR Senior Investigator at the Division l of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester. Her main research is developing and evaluating complex psychological interventions for anxiety and depression in primary care mental health. Her programme of research has focused on alternative, accessible and innovative low intensity interventions for common mental health problems, particularly guided self-help and the use of the telephone in delivering psychological interventions. More recently Karina has been involved in leading programmes of research which aim to improve user and carer involvement in care planning and physical health of individuals with enduring mental health problems in secondary care mental health settings.

Karina is a mental health nurse by background and and delivers CBT using remote methods e.g. Skype and telephone. She is past president of the BABCP (British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapy).

Keynote Speaker