Opening the door to better mental health

Illustration of head with red heart over pink brain

Image: Adobe Stock/lvnl

Image: Adobe Stock/lvnl

A fleeting encounter with a patient while touring a northern European mental health facility in the 1990s is a moment Professor Harvey Whiteford has never forgotten.

He doesn’t know what happened to the young woman with blonde hair, but the colourful drawing of herself that she rushed across the room to give him as he was leaving the ward, turned into a touchstone for the work he was doing around the world.

“I don’t know why she handed me the picture that day, but I’ve always thought she was giving me a message – saying ‘don’t forget about me’,” Professor Whiteford says.

“I took that drawing back to my office at the World Bank in Washington DC and stuck it on my wall.

“She came to represent the people I was trying to help because with my role at the time, you were so far removed from the people needing services on the ground.”

There have been many similar moments that have guided Professor Whiteford’s long career from medical doctor to psychiatrist, roles as the Director of Mental Health for Queensland and head of Mental Health for the federal government, to the World Bank and then UQ as the Director of the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research.

“I’ve always believed when doors of opportunity open, walk through them; don’t be scared to try something different,” he explains.

“I never set out to do psychiatry, but while I was working as a paediatric trainee on an oncology ward, an opportunity came up to move across to the psychiatric ward at the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

“I remember getting a big bunch of keys and walking into a locked ward.

“I was taken to see a patient with desperation in his eyes as he sat on the floor of a seclusion room; he needed help and I felt like there was something I could do for him.”

This was a time when psychiatry and mental illness were more stigmatised and marginalised, and it wasn’t an area many doctors and nurses chose as their first career.

Since then, Professor Whiteford has been at the forefront of mental health – helping drive change through policy and the structural reform of services in Australia and internationally.

After a research fellowship at Stanford University, he returned to Australia, established the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and oversaw the implementation of the first national mental health plan as Chair of the National Mental Health Working Group.

He was then appointed to the first mental health position at the World Bank in Washington DC where he negotiated loans for countries to establish programs for mental and neurological disorders.

“We were helping many low-income and middle-income countries, including those rebuilding after years of war,” he explains.

“So, we were providing capital not only for the things that you could see like roads, bridges and schools, but also for health and education, and more invisible things like the psychological trauma from conflict.

“It was a challenge, but I felt like we made a real impact in these countries.”

Fast forward two decades and Professor Whiteford is almost back where he started – as Director of the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and Professor of Population Mental Health at UQ, where he is also leading teams responsible for estimating the global epidemiology and burden of mental disorders, and designing and planning health service to reduce the burden.

“The change in attitude towards mental health in one lifetime has been dramatic, but there is still a long way to go to break down all of the barriers and stigmas associated with mental illness.”

“Illnesses that affect the brain and mind are still treated differently to those that affect our heart or lungs.

“I think the pandemic has brought mental health into focus for a lot of people, with recent research by my team finding cases of major depressive and anxiety disorders increased by 25 per cent worldwide during the first year of the pandemic.”

For someone who never planned on being a psychiatrist, Professor Whiteford has carved out a long and successful career that has driven change for mental health care and patients.

“I believe I’ve made a difference through the impact of my research and being able to influence government decisions in health policy and planning. In this way, I like to think I’ve helped more people than I would have as a psychiatrist conducting one-on-one consultations with patients,” he reflects.

“Mind you, I still do one day a week of clinical work seeing patients, and I do it to connect with and remember who this work is for.”

Professor Harvey Whiteford

This story is featured in the Winter 2022 edition of UQmedicine Magazine. View the latest edition here. Or to listen, watch, or read more stories from UQ’s Faculty of Medicine, visit our blog, MayneStream.