We are currently in the most challenging times of our lives, and it has never been more apparent to all of us that, to provide the best care for our patients, we all need to prioritise care for ourselves too.
Please join us on Wednesday 13 October at 12:30 pm for our Mental Health Week Grand Round.
We will be joined by Assoc Prof Vinay Lakra, President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and Mr Dean Yates, former Bureau Chief of Reuters, and Mental Health Advocate.
Together they will discuss how we all need to shift our behaviour to help make our workplace safer and more supportive for people experiencing difficulties with their Mental health. Listen to Dean’s lived experience and learn why it is important to break down the stigma often associated with mental health and hear how we can take some simple steps towards self-care from Vinay.
Mental health is a spectrum. We all go through periods in our life where we feel distressed, worried, or disconnected. Everyone will benefit from listening to this Grand Round.
Please join in on Wednesday to start making a difference and become an ally to support your peers and colleagues at work when they are experiencing some of these issues.
Together we can break the stigma and the silence.
Associate Professor Vinay Lakra
Associate Professor Vinay Lakra is the President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP). He is also the Clinical Director of the Northern Area Mental Health Service of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, and a member of the Victorian Board of the Medical Board of Australia. Besides clinical psychiatry, his expertise includes leadership and management, clinical governance systems, and patient safety and quality. He remains actively engaged in the supervision and mentoring of junior doctors and psychiatrists.
In a previous role as the Deputy Chief Psychiatrist of Victoria, he worked to strengthen the safety and quality of service delivery in public mental health services across Victoria. In the past, he has been a surveyor with ACHS.
Associate Professor Lakra completed his medical and psychiatry training in India and moved to Australia in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators, has a Masters of Health Management from the University of New South Wales and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Dean Yates
Dean Yates was head of Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Reuters, the international news organisation, until January 2020.
During his three years in the role, Dean focused on raising awareness and reducing stigma at the world’s largest news provider. He trained managers on how to look after the mental health of their teams. Before that, Dean was a journalist, bureau chief and senior editor at Reuters for 23 years, covering the Bali bombings in 2002 and the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia’s Aceh province in 2004.
Dean was diagnosed with PTSD in early 2016 after his role as Reuters’ bureau chief in Iraq from 2007-2008, where three staff were killed on his watch, including two by a U.S. Apache helicopter in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. He has been admitted three times to the Ward 17 psychiatric unit at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne for treatment of his PTSD and moral injury.
Dean is writing a memoir called The Road Out Of Ward 17. He expects to finish the book by the end of this year. He lives with his family in the village of Evandale, Tasmania.