Professor Gordon Parker

Gordon Parker

I am a Scientia Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and in 2024, am marking my fifty years at that university. In previous decades I was head of the academic department of psychiatry at the university, head of the clinical hospital department and headed the area mental health service for the eastern suburbs of Sydney. I was Founder of the Black Dog Institute (a clinical research facility focusing on mood disorders) and its initial Executive Director. My positions with the Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Psychiatrists include having been Editor of its Journal and initiating its Quality Assurance Committee. I have held appointments with legal organisations including the NSW Guardianship Board and the NSW Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

In 2004 I received a Citation Laureate as the Australian Scientist most highly cited in ‘Psychiatry/Psychology’. In 2018 I received the prestigious James Cook Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales and was a finalist for the NSW Senior Australian of the Year. In 2020 I was recipient of the 2020 Australian Mental Health Prize. My research and clinical practice have focussed on the mood disorders (ie depressive and bipolar conditions). My 24th book on a radical new therapy for the bipolar disorders will be published in March 2025.

Ambivalent about pursuing a career in medicine as a student I contemplated being a writer. My first novel (‘Bed and Bored’) was published in 1966 under the pseudonym of ‘Gordon Barry’ (not out of modesty but to stay hidden if it crashed) while my second (“In Two Minds”) was published in 2017, and with a richly supportive testimonial from Stephen Fry. In the 60’s, I wrote for The Mavis Bramston Show (Australia’s first satirical TV show) and OZ Magazine (Australia’s first satirical magazine), was a Science broadcaster for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in Sydney and London, and was a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald and for The Australian newspapers. In 2004 I had a play (“Personality Games”) produced by La Mama in Melbourne, and I am currently seeking to have a play considering the impact of Churchill’s mood disorder on the disastrous Dardanelles campaign in World War I.

I continue to practice as a clinician (focusing on the mood disorders – but increasingly being swamped by those with ADD and ADHD). As a researcher I have enjoyed being both a contrarian (challenging concepts or models that have no validity) while much of my revisionist research (into mood disorders, personality disorders, burnout and a range of other states) has proceeded by a 3M model (ie how to best model, measure and manage the relevant conditions