Altering States Working for Wellbeing

Keynote Speakers

• Professor Dame Carol Black DBE MD FRCP FMedSci (UK)

  Professor Dame Carol Black is the National Director for Health and Work, Chairman of the Nuffield Trust, President of the British Lung Foundation, and Pro-Chancellor of the University of Bristol.  She is a past-President of the Royal College of Physicians, and immediate past-Chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.    The Centre she established at the Royal Free Hospital, London is internationally renowned in the field of connective tissue diseases.

  Since the early-1990s she has worked at board level in a number of organisations, including the Royal Free Hospital Hampstead NHS Trust, the Health Foundation, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, and the Imperial College Healthcare Charity, and recently chaired the UK Health Honours Committee.  She is a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, a member of the Committee for the Queen’s Awards for Voluntary Service, chairs the governance board of the new Centre for Workforce Intelligence, and is on several national committees aiming to improve healthcare.   She is a Foreign Affiliate of the Institute of Medicine USA, and has been awarded many honorary degrees and fellowships.

   

  Ethan Watters (US) is an author and journalist who has spent the last two decades writing about psychiatry and social psychology. Most recently, he is the author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. The book suggests that America is homogenizing not just the categorization and treatment of the mentally ill but the subjective experience of being mentally ill as well.  He began his career writing about daycare abuse scares, satanic cult conspiracies, and other urban hysterias of the early 1990s. He was the first national magazine writer to expose therapists who lead their patients to uncover “recovered memories” of early childhood abuse. That work culminated in a co-authorship of Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy and Sexual Hyseria, a groundbreaking indictment of the recovered memory movement. Watters is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Discover, Men’s Journal, Details, Wired, and This American Life. His writing on the new research surrounding epigenetics was been featured in the 2003’s Best American Science and Nature Writing series. Watters is co-founder of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, a workspace for journalists, novelists, poets and filmmakers. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children.

   

  Dr Peter Cotton (Australia)

  Peter is a Clinical & Organisational Psychologist specialising in occupational mental health and how organisational environments influence employee behavioural and wellbeing outcomes. He has published a number of book chapters and research papers, and works as an advisor to government and the private sector. Peter served three terms as a Director on the Board of Directors of the Australian Psychological Society and was appointed a Fellow of the Society in 2002. He currently holds the positions of Director of Psychology Services with Medibank Health Solutions and Senior Mental Health Clinician with WorkSafe and Transport Accident Commission, Victoria. Peter is also a member of the Advisory Group with Comcare’s Centre for Excellence in Mental Health and Wellbeing at Work and is a Mental Health Advisor with SuperFriend (a mental health foundation funded by the industry superannuation funds with 450,000 employer members).

   

   

  Paul O’Connor is the CEO of Comcare, the Australian federal agency responsible for occupational health and safety and workers compensation in the Commonwealth jurisdiction. An approximate 60% of Comcare’s total compensation claims are for  psychological injury. Paul has worked in senior leadership roles in safety promotion, risk management, insurance and reinsurance in Australia and overseas, including the US, London and Singapore and across both the public and private sectors. Prior to joining Comcare Paul served as the CEO of Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission. Paul’s training was in labour studies and law, graduating from QUT, SACAE, the University of Sydney and the University of Adelaide. Paul is passionate about the need to improve workplace health and safety and helping people return to health, work and independence following injury.