Our Steering Committee
Our Steering Committee brings together psychiatrists, researchers, social workers, journalists, strategists and people with direct experience of the mental health system. Different disciplines, one shared conviction: that most people deserve better than a broken-brain diagnosis.
Lawyer turned non-profit CEO, with expertise in policy, governance and movement building. Lisa provides advice and insight to help ensure that our advocacy results in real change
Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at Alfred Health, with over 20 years transforming how mental health services work for young people. A founding contributor to Australia's headspace network and a consistent champion for strength-based, non-pathologising care.
Child psychiatrist, philosopher, and researcher leading the push for safer, more ethical mental health practice. Thirty years of frontline clinical work — from child protection to remote Indigenous communities — grounds his advocacy in lived reality.
Social work practitioner and Open Dialogue trainer with two decades in public mental health. Rachel's work centres the voices of people in distress — and the relationships around them — over diagnostic labels and medication-first responses.
Her independent research and her own withdrawal journey make her a strong voice for the project.
Journalist and advocate with four decades writing about systemic change, including a decade of deep engagement with youth mental health policy. Former chief editorial writer at The Age and board member of the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre.
Author of Dying for a Cure and lived-experience advocate who spent three years cycling through psychiatric hospitals before discovering her treatment was the problem. She has spent fifteen years since making sure others don't face the same.
Peer support worker whose decade-long experience of compounding diagnoses and medication-first treatment ended in recovery outside the Western mental health system — and a later diagnosis that reframed everything. Now working from the inside to shift the system toward autonomy and human rights.
Deprescribing pharmacist, TaperMate founder and passionate advocate. Alicia's work focuses on making the idea of stopping psychiatric medications more accessible to the general public through advocacy and the development of digital health tools to support patients and their doctors to follow safer, evidence-based tapering plans to reduce unnecessary long-term medication use.