Director - Professor Vaughan Carr

Vaughan Carr graduated in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1973 and received his training in psychiatry at the University of Rochester (1974-78) and Yale University (1978-80) in the USA. After 8 years as an academic psychiatrist at the University of Adelaide, he took up the position of Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle in 1989 and Director, Hunter Mental Health (1997- 2005).

As Director of Hunter Mental Health, Professor Carr led a program of structural reorganisation, reform and renewal of mental health services in the Hunter Area based on mental health strategic plans, which he prepared in 1993 and 1996.

Vaughan Carr was Founding Director of the Hunter Institute of Mental Health in Newcastle from 1992 to 1997. He was President of the Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research (ASPR) in 1997-98. He has served on numerous Regional Grants Interview Committees and Grant Review Panels of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC) since 1988, and has been the psychiatry representative on the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (2004-06).

Commencing in 1999 Vaughan Carr was Director of the Centre for Mental Health Studies, a multi-disciplinary organisation for research, education and service evaluation in mental health. He was appointed Scientific Director of the Neuroscience Institute for Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders (NISAD) in 2004. In 2006 he was appointed Director of a new Priority Research Centre at the University of Newcastle, the Centre for Brain and Mental Health Research. Professor Carr’s research has been recognised by his peers through the award of the ASPR Organon Research Award (1987), the ASPR Novartis Oration (2003), and the ASPR Founders’ Medal (2006).

Since 1985 he has been a chief investigator on sixteen NH&MRC and numerous other research grants, and has been awarded over $7 million in research grant funding since 2002. He is the lead chief investigator on a NH&MRC Enabling Grant for the establishment of a national schizophrenia research bank involving collaborators in four states. He has co-edited two textbooks and has made contributions to a number of books, published proceedings and an encyclopaedia. He has over 140 publications in the areas of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, early psychosis, depression, post-traumatic stress, mental health care delivery in general practice, child psychiatry, cognitive neuroscience, mental health service evaluation, alcohol and drug abuse, psychotherapy and health economics