Dr Averil Cook

Dr Averil Cook is a Clinical Psychologist, Board‑Approved Supervisor and Director of Bodhi & Psychology, an equity‑centred organisation providing therapy, professional training, clinical supervision and consultation grounded in anti‑oppressive practice. As a woman of Chinese, European and Indigenous heritage, her work spans education, public and private health systems and policy, interrogating the structural and systemic forces that produce distress and harm.

Averil currently combines clinical practice with training, supervision and consultation for leaders in the profession, the Australian Human Rights Commission and NSW health. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at UNSW, delivers Board‑Approved Masterclasses for Psychologists, and advises university psychology training program committees.

Averils work across public health, tertiary education, human rights organisations and national workforce structures, bringing a decolonial, anti‑oppressive lens to clinical practice, supervision, systems governance and policy reform. With a background in eating disorders, family therapy and trauma, she is the former Director of Masters of Clinical Psychology training programs and former Manager of CAMHS services. Her work challenges clinicians and systems to adopt human‑rights‑centred approaches to mental health care, research and workforce development. Averil and Michelle Lawrence, a Kamilaroi Aboriginal Mental Health Worker, have recently co‑authored Decolonizing Mental Health in Australia (in Aboriginal Social Worker Voices, Bloomsbury, 2026), examining how supremacy, surveillance and institutional violence are reproduced through mental health frameworks — and how Indigenous, relational and land‑based worldviews offer liberatory alternatives. Averil also produces practical resources, podcasts and reflective practice to support therapists to integrate anti‑oppressive, culturally responsive and context‑aware practices into their clinical and supervisory work.