13th International Mental Health Conference

Invited & Confirmed Speakers

• The Hon Mark Butler MP - Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Mental Health Reform

• Barbara Hingston - Boardmember of Headspace - National Youth Mental Health Foundation

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• Barbara Hingston has held senior executive and corporate management roles in government and the community sectors. These have included as Executive Director for Mercy Health Care Australia, a national collaboration between Congregations of the Sisters of Mercy owning extensive health and aged care assets throughout Australia, and within the Commonwealth public service, as Deputy Executive Director of the Australian Heritage Commission. Her most recent role has been as Senior Clinician and Direct Service Coordinator for CASA House, a counselling and public advocacy service against sexual assault, in Melbourne.
• Barbara has extensive corporate governance experience of diverse public and community health and welfare services. This has included Directorships of Boards of public and community health and welfare agencies in eastern Australia. She is a Board Director of the Austin Health Service, Heidelberg Victoria, also Chairing its Community Advisory Committee and was a Director of Mackillop Family Services, Victoria between 2003-2006. She has also been a Board Director of Marymead Child and Family Services ACT, a Member of the Public Housing Review Tribunal in the ACT and a Member of the Dental Board of Queensland.
  

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• Professor Julio Licinio - Managing Director The John Curtin School of Medical Research, The Australian National University, Canberra

• Julio Licinio, M.D., F.A.P.A., is Professor and Director, John Curtin School of Medicine, The Australian National University, and head of the Department of Translational Medicine. He is also a Research Professor at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. Professor Licinio is originally from Brazil and lived for over 25 years in the United States, where he had clinical and research training in endocrinology and psychiatry at University of Chicago and Cornell.

• He then held academic positions at Yale, NIH, and UCLA, where he was Professor and Vice-Chair of Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Pharmacogenomics. Prior of moving to Australia, he was Miller Professor, Chairman of Psychiatry and Associate Dean at University of Miami. His work on the fundamental endocrine and pharmacogenomic mechanisms at the interface of obesity and depression has been extensively funded by NIH, and it is highly cited in the scientific literature.

• Dr. Licinio is the Founding Editor of three Nature Publishing Group journals, The Pharmacogenomics Journal, Translational Psychiatry and Molecular Psychiatry, which has an Impact Factor of 15, the highest in its field worldwide.

• Eva Van Der Ploeg - Research Fellow – Monash University Aged Mental Health Research Unit

  Dr Eva Van Der Ploeg Appointment(s): Research Fellow - Aged Mental Health Research Unit Qualifications: Doctor of Public Health (Academiae Erasmianae Roterdamensis, 2009); Master of Science in Health Science - Public Health (Academiae Erasmianae Roterdamensis, 2008); Master of Social Psychology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2004); Diploma of HPE (Journalism & Public Relations) (Hogeschool van Utrecht, 1999) Research interests: Dementia; behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia; Residential care; Non-pharmacological and psychosocial interventions for dementia; Assistive technology
  Contact: Eva.VanDerPloeg@monash.edu

  Eva van der Ploeg is an Early Career Researcher. She has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and Communication and Master's degrees in both psychology (cum laude, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and public health (Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands). She completed her PhD in public health in 2009 at the Erasmus Medical Centre. After completion, she moved to Melbourne and took up the position of Research Fellow in the Aged Mental Health Research Unit, School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University. She is project manager of a large trial investigating the effectiveness of personalised Montessori activities on agitation in persons with dementia (NHMRC #606639) and numerous smaller projects focussing on the use of non-pharmacological interventions and assistive technology in the nursing home setting. She has extensive experience working in aged care facilities with people with dementia.

  The NHMRC-funded trial has been recently completed and Dr van der Ploeg has been successful in communicating her results to co-investigators and practitioners alike both nationally and internationally, on a number of occasions as invited speaker. She has secured six grants in the three years since she completed her PhD totalling over AU$600,000 (four as CIA). Recent research activities have generated four papers with another three under review and two in preparation (all as first author) together with two manuscripts of which she is co-author. She has reviewed papers for BMJ, Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, Aging and Mental Health, BioMed Health Services, International Journal of Nursing Studies, Journal of Aging and Health, International Psychogeriatrics and the Cochrane Dementia Group. She has supervised two Masters candidates and two Honours students to completion. In 2012 she will supervise at least one Honours student and one PhD candidate.

• Mr John Mendoza – Director ConNetica Consulting

John is a Director of ConNetica after a career that has seen him hold several executive positions including the inaugural Chair of the Australian Government's National Advisory Council on Mental Health, CEO of the Mental Health Council of Australia and CEO of the Australian Sports Drug Agency.

John's current appointments, include:

• Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Sport Science, University of the Sunshine Coast
• Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney
• Board member of the new Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre
• Chair Designate, Headspace Sunshine Coast

John has authored and co-authored dozens of reports and submissions to public inquiries on mental health and suicide in the past six years. He is widely credited with having played a critical role with Professors Pat McGorry and Ian Hickie, in securing the $2.2billion mental health reform package in the 2011 Federal Budget. In 2005-6, he also played a key role in development and implementation of the campaign advocacy to secure the $5billion under the COAG Mental Health Plan.

John has had a long involvement in the alcohol and drug field. Previously in the 1980s he was Director of Education with the Drug and Alcohol Services Council of SA and a member of the National Steering Committee for the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) and later a lecturer in Public Health at Queensland University of Technology before taking up his appointment as Deputy CEO with ASDA in the mid-1990s.

• Mr Robert Troy - Principal Clinical Advisor (Mental Health) Mental Health Alcohol and Other Drugs Directorate

• Robert is the Principal Clinical Advisor (Mental Health) with the Mental Health Alcohol and Other Drugs Directorate within the Division of the Chief Health Officer, Queensland Health. His position supports the Office of the Principal Advisor in Psychiatry and this office is also responsible for statewide mental health patient safety.
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  He has a background in mental health nursing and has experience in all areas of mental health service delivery with a keen interest in the area of Dual Diagnosis (substance use and mental health) and homelessness in mental health. Many of his previous clinical positions have related to these areas. He has also worked as a Team Leader in community mental health and as a Nurse Manager in both acute mental health units and long stay community care environments. Robert is also currently a part time surveyor for the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards.