Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
July 13, 2026
Laurence Cobbaert
ObjectiveThis article examines an epistemic double standard in psychiatry: patients' confidence, certainty and conviction are often treated as clinically interpretable, particularly in research on metacognition, insight and overconfidence in psychosis, while psychiatry's own institutional confidence is less consistently subjected to scrutiny. Drawing on literature concerning epistemic...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
June 11, 2026
Eden Mane, Saras Mane
ObjectivesTo systematically review the effectiveness, safety, and care models of telehealth-supported ketamine for depression and/or anxiety in adults and consider implications for Australasian clinical practice.MethodsFollowing PRISMA 2020, we searched for randomised or observational studies of adults receiving at-home telehealth-supported ketamine for depression and/or anxiety, to August...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
June 5, 2026
Osama Bhatti, Mohammad Qasim Latifi
BackgroundPsychiatry has long maintained an ambivalent relationship with religion and spirituality, often acknowledging their relevance while remaining cautious about clinical engagement.ObjectivesThis article examines the historical, conceptual, and clinical tensions surrounding spirituality in psychiatry and explores how contemporary psychedelic research has renewed attention to meaning and...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
June 2026
Peter McArdle, Mike Trott, Nicola Warren et al.
ObjectiveThis study examined stimulant and medicinal cannabis prescribing in individuals before and after referral to an early psychosis (EP) service in Queensland, Australia.MethodsA retrospective review of 220 consecutive EP referrals (2019-2023) was conducted, extracting data on stimulant and medicinal cannabis prescriptions from clinical records. Longitudinal prescribing patterns were...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
August 1, 2025
Vera A Barata, Suzie Lavoie, Łukasz Gawęda et al.
3 citations
IntroductionWe previously proposed a neurophenomenological model of schizophrenia, linking basic self-disturbance with neural deficits of source monitoring and aberrant salience. Baseline comparisons in ultra-high risk (UHR) and first-episode psychosis (FEP) samples indicated a relationship between basic self-disturbance and source monitoring deficits, but not aberrant salience. The current...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
July 8, 2025
William Lugg
ObjectivesTo review the available evidence, key deliberations, and potential influences behind the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee's (PBAC's) conditional recommendation for esketamine to be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).ConclusionsThis paper forms part 2 of the esketamine story in Australia-its handling by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and,...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
June 26, 2025
Adam Bayes
BackgroundDespite a limited evidence base to inform clinicians, Australia has adopted a national approach in rescheduling psilocybin and MDMA as clinical therapies for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), respectively.PurposeThis paper explores clinical research domains warranting further investigation through outlining the reflections of a...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
June 1, 2025
Tharshanan Edwin Peiris, Amrit Pokhrel, Yuvaraj Paudel
2 citations
BackgroundUnipolar depression is a prevalent mental health disorder with persistent, treatment-resistant symptoms. Traditional antidepressants take weeks to show effects, underscoring the need for faster alternatives. Ketamine, originally an anaesthetic, has emerged as a rapid-acting antidepressant.ObjectiveThis systematic review evaluates ketamine's efficacy and safety in unipolar...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
June 2023
Cameron Grover, Lauren Monds, Mark Montebello
To assess Australian psychiatrists' and psychiatry trainees' knowledge of and attitudes towards psychedelics as treatment for psychiatric disorders. Australian members of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists were invited to participate in an anonymous survey that ran from October 1 to November 30 2021. Participants were asked about their knowledge of the risks and...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
August 1, 2009
David Maclaren, James Asugeni, Rowena Asugeni et al.
23 citations
The aim of this paper is to describe the newly established mental health services at Atoifi Adventist Hospital, Solomon Islands, the sociocultural context in which it operates, and illustrate how the service is engaging with the Kwaio community to understand and incorporate local sociocultural beliefs into prevention, treatment and recovery journeys. Five remote hamlets in East Kwaio, Malaita...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
February 1, 2008
Amanda Bray
Extended mind theory, a recent development in the field of cognitive philosophy, suggests that the information and processes contained in external objects such as notebooks and computers can be considered as much a part of a person's mind as the processes contained within the brain itself. This paper aims to outline extended mind theory, and to explore how it might be applied to an...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
February 2007
James Graham Scott, Barry Nurcombe, Judith Sheridan et al.
The aim of the study was to compare the phenomenology of hallucinations in hospitalized adolescents diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychotic disorder. Diagnoses were ascertained in 66 adolescents consecutively admitted to an acute adolescent unit in Australia. Hallucinations were examined to compare their phenomenology in PTSD with psychotic disorder. On most measures,...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
March 1, 2004
Prakash Gangdev
To describe a patient who presented with psychopathology in the wake of sleep paralysis and hypnopompic hallucinations, and to discuss the importance of these phenomena to psychiatric diagnoses. Case report. A 25-year-old black South African woman developed paranoid beliefs and a sad and anxious mood in the wake of her first experience of sleep paralysis and hypnic hallucinations. She had no...