Dr Richard Benjamin

Dr Richard Benjamin finished his Psychiatry training with the RANZCP in 2001, and his Adult Psychotherapy training in the Conversational Model of Meares and Hobson (largely a therapy that addresses the adult sequelae of childhood trauma in the therapeutic relationship) in 2009. He works in the adult public mental health service in Tasmania, predominantly in acute and chronic community work, although he also does some inpatient work.

He is particularly interested in the recognition and management of the long-term sequelae of childhood abuse in adult patients presenting with serious mental illness, and the systemic response to this patient group. He is also interested more broadly in the system as it impacts upon all patients suffering with mental illness. In community work this particularly involves the issue of continuity of care and of carer, the benefits of the “in-house crisis team,” and the importance of the therapeutic relationship in general. In inpatient work he is also interested in the role of therapeutic engagement, and in the reduction of seclusion and restraint.