Assoc Prof Sathya Rao

Associate Professor Sathya Rao is the Executive Clinical Director of Spectrum, a statewide service specialising in personality disorder and complex trauma. He is also the Vice President of Australian Borderline Personality Disorder Foundation. He is the president of Australasian Association for Research & Treatment of Personality Disorders (AART-PD) and also chairs the Committee for Professional Practice of RANZCP. 

In recognition of his outstanding service to Victorian Psychiatry over many years, the Victorian branch of the college of psychiatrists (RANZCP), in 2020 awarded him the ‘Meritorious Service Award’. In recognition of his contributions to psychiatry he received the award of the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) (General Division) in June 2022. He is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with training and backgrounds in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mentalization Based Therapy (MBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and psychodynamic therapies.

He has been actively involved in teaching and training activities across Australia, for psychiatrists, GPs, and clinicians of allied health disciplines in the last 25 years. He was the head of psychiatry training for Victoria, RANZCP. He has also held the roles of Director of Training, Director of Advanced Training (Psychotherapies and Adult Psychiatry) and a mentor for IMG psychiatrists. He was a member of the BPD Guidelines Development Committee of National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC), Australia. Dr Rao has been an invited speaker and has presented academic papers at national and international conferences. Dr Rao is involved in clinical research and has published more than 70 research papers, contributed chapters to books and has co-authored books on Personality Disorder.