Marie-Paule Austin
Professor Marie-Paule Austin is the St John of
God Chair of Perinatal and Women’s Mental Health at the University
of New South Wales and a Perinatal Psychiatrist at the Royal
Hospital for Women, Sydney, and was past President of the
Australasian Marcé Society. In 2007 she led the development of the
Australian beyondblue Perinatal Mental Health National Action Plan
for the implementation of universal psychosocial assessment,
training and pathways to care in the perinatal period. She led the
development of the National Action Plan for Perinatal Mental Health
(2008) Australian Perinatal Mental Health Clinical Practice
Guidelines (released March 2011).
Prof Austin established a model of perinatal psychosocial
screening and early intervention which has informed clinical
practice across Australia, and is now being assessed in Canada with
a view to its uptake there.
Austin has published over 100 articles on perinatal mental
health and mood disorders. She is a national and international
authority on translation of research into policy and practice in
the field of perinatal mental health. Her research interests
include the impact of stress in pregnancy on infant outcomes,
impact of pregnancy exposure to antidepressants on infant
neurodevelopment, development of psychosocial risk assessment
tools, and evaluation of perinatal mental health policy.
Nicole Reilly
Nicole is the Research Coordinator at the
Perinatal and Women’s Mental Health Unit. She has extensive
experience conducting research in the field of perinatal
mental health, including coordinating a five-year longitudinal
study examining the impact of anxiety during pregnancy and early
parenthood on maternal and child outcomes. Nicole co-wrote the
beyondblue National Action Plan for Perinatal Mental
Health (2008) and contributed to the beyondblue Clinical
Practice Guidelines for Depression and Related Disorders – Anxiety,
Bipolar Disorder and Puerperal Psychosis – in the Perinatal
Period.
She has an ongoing interest in the role of
perinatal mental health policy initiatives in improving outcomes
for women and families, and in the use of population-based data to
examine these issues. Nicole’s other research interests include the
developmental origins of health and disease, the impact of mental
health morbidity on the experience of parenting, and outcomes for
women admitted to specialist mother-baby inpatient units.
Dr Janan Karatas
Dr Karatas is a Senior Research Officer at the
Perinatal and Women’s Mental Health Unit. Her interests in
perinatal mental health research began with her involvement in the
beyondblue Postnatal Depression Program and have grown to include
brain sciences and genetics. Janan is now drawing on these
research interests to develop an fMRI study exploring maternal
responsiveness in mothers with bipolar disorder.
Bettina Christl
Bettina Christl is an experienced Research
Officer at the Perinatal and Women’s Mental Health Unit. She
has a background in psychology and international public health with
experience in primary health care and health service research.
Bettina’s main role is the implementation of a data-linkage study
to evaluate the impact of perinatal mental health policies on
service use and health outcomes of perinatal women and their
infants. Bettina is also involved in the evaluation of health
service delivery at St John of God and has been instrumental in the
development of electronic and online survey instruments that will
provide further information about how to better serve the needs of
patients at St John of God Hospital, Burwood.
Carolyn Yin
Carolyn has a Bachelor of Psychology with
experience in community mental health, and worked at Lifeline prior
to her role at St John of God Hospital. Carolyn’s
primary role is to provide research support at the Perinatal &
Women’s Mental Health Unit, and also co-ordinates the Access to
Allied Psychological Services program at St John of God Health
Care.