Professor Graham Meadows

Professor Meadows is Director of Southern Synergy, the Southern Adult Mental Health Research, Training and Evaluation Centre

Biography

Graduating in Medicine in 1980, Graham Meadows then pursued clinical training in general practice, internal medicine and in psychiatry in the UK and South Australia. Moving to Melbourne in 1993 he worked with the University of Melbourne as Senior Lecturer and later Associate Professor until 2003. He has been Clinical Director for an Area Mental Health Service, has led award winning developments in shared care, and he spearheaded the development of primary mental health teams in Victoria. In education he has particularly worked with multidisciplinary initiatives at community development and postgraduate levels. His doctoral studies and a substantial part of his publication record are in health services epidemiology in which area he has expertise in questionnaire development and analysis of complex data sets.

In 2003 Graham took up a position as Professor of Adult Psychiatry with Monash University, also Foundation Director of the Research, Training and Evaluation Centre for Southern Mental Health, subsequently named Southern Synergy. This centre now has capacities for training design, implementation and evaluation, epidemiological analysis, and project management. In his role with Southern Health Graham sits on the Executive of the Mental Health Program, he chairs the Southern Health Postgraduate Psychiatry Training Committee and the Victorian Southern Workforce Development Steering Group

Graham Meadows is on the Editorial Board of Primary Care and Community Psychiatry and is first editor on the textbook ‘Mental Health in Australia’, with a second edition of 698 pages published by Oxford University Press in January 2007. He has a longstanding personal involvement with meditation practices. In recent years he has brought this into professional and academic life becoming actively involved in clinical and research work with mindfulness-based therapies. Presently he has chief responsibility for a National Health and Medical Research Council funded randomised controlled trial of mindfulness based cognitive therapy in relapse-prevention for depression.

Email Professor Graham Meadows

Professional Activities

Professor Meadows holds a consultant appointment with Southern Health, with responsibilities including oversight of the Southern Health Psychiatry Training Scheme and membership of the Executive leadership team as Director of Research.
He is Chair of the Southern Workforce Development Cluster Steering Committee, one of three such entities in Victoria charged from DHS Victoria with coordinating workforce training across multiple services and disciplines.
He heads the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy training program based with the Southern Synergy group.
He has been the representative from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists on the General Practice Mental Health Standards Collaboration since this group was formed.

Research Interests

Health services epidemiology
Health services research
Mindfulness in Therapeutic interventions
Workforce development, particularly multidisciplinary approaches to clinical and professional education and development
Primary care psychiatry
Mental health economics

Potential Student Projects

Professor Meadows is open to discussion of projects in the following areas:

Epidemiology of Health Service Use, particularly making use of the opportunities afforded to secondary analytical work by the forthcoming Second National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, building on published work from the first survey in 1997.
Mindfulness and mental health problems, including work on mechanisms of action, and clinical applications working from the base of MBCT
Primary mental health care and effective models of linkage with specialist services

Teaching

Professor Meadows has a longstanding interest in multidisciplinary professional postgraduate education and presently has involvement in the following areas:
Overall course coordination for the Graduate Diploma in Mental Health Sciences - Community Mental Health.
Chair of the Southern Health Postgraduate Psychiatry Training Committee, with overall responsibility for Registrar training in Psychiatry within Southern Health
Regular contributions to the MPM/MMed course for psychiatrists

Collaborations

University or group	Primary Collaborating Academic	Topic
London School of Economics	Professor Martin Knapp	Health Economics
Monash Institute for Health Services Research	Professor Don Campbell	Services Research
Monash University - Organisational Psychology	A/Professor Elisabeth Wilson Evered	Organisational change in mental health services
Monash University Department of General Practice	Professor Leon Piterman	GP training and intervention studies
Université de Montreal	Professor Alain Lesage	Epidemiology
Université Paris 5	Professor Viviane Kovess	Epidemiology
University of British Columbia	Professor Raymond Goldney	Epidemiology
University of Melbourne	A/Prof Jane Pirkis	Health economics, epidemiology and program evaluation
University of Queensland	Professor Philip Burgess	Epidemiology
University of Saskatoon	Dr Raymond Tempier	Epidemiology
University of Toronto,	Professor Zindel Segal,	Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy
University of Western Ontario	Dr David Haslam	Primary care service models
University of Wollongong	Dr Mitchell Byrne	Adherence therapies
Yale University	A/Professor Larry Davidson	Services evaluation

Grant Support

Professor Meadows has been an investigator or project leader on 20 successful grant submissions involving over AUD$4M of funding from bodies including the Australian Research Council, The General Practice Evaluation Program, Victorian State and Australian Commonwealth Governments, Beyondblue the National Depression Initiative, the Victorian Centre for Excellence in Depression and Related Disorders, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

He presently is primary grant holder for $600,000 of NHMRC funding for a four year multi-site study examining effectiveness of mindfulness based cognitive therapy in depression relapse prevention.

Publications

Ten Selected Publications

Meadows, G. (1997)- Resource allocation for public mental health services in Victoria. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 31; pp. 95-104

Meadows, G., Liaw, S.-T., Burgess, P., Bobevski, I. & Fossey, E. (2001) Australian General Practice and the Meeting of Needs for Mental Health Care. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 36, 595-603.

Meadows, G., Strasser, K., Moeller-Saxone, K., Hocking, B., Stanton, J. & Kee, P. (2001) Smoking and schizophrenia: the development of collaborative management guidelines. Australasian Psychiatry, 9, 340-344.

Pirkis, J., Burgess, P., Meadows, G. & Dunt, D. (2001) Access to Australian mental health care by people from non-English speaking backgrounds. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 35, 274-182.

Meadows, G., Burgess, P. & Bobevski, I. (2002) Distributing mental health care resources: strategic implications from the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, 217-223.

Meadows, G., Singh, B., Burgess, P. & Bobevski, I. (2002) Psychiatry and need for mental health care in Australia, findings from the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, 210-216

Meadows, G. N. (2003) Overcoming barriers to reintegration of patients with schizophrenia: developing a best-practice model for discharge from specialist care. Medical Journal of Australia, 178 (9) Suppl 5, S53-S56.

Mihalopoulos, C., Meadows, G., Stiller, A., Pirkis, J. & Burgess, P. (2005) Attaching Unit Costs to Australia's National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics, 8, 61-69.

Mihalopoulos, C, Kiropoulos, L, Shih, S.T.F, Gunn, J. Blashki, G, Meadows, G. (2005) Exploratory economic analyses of two primary care mental health projects: implications for sustainability, Medical Journal of Australia ; 183 (10): S73-S76

Meadows, G, Singh, B, Grigg, M (Editors) Mental Health in Australia; Collaborative Community Practice. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, South Melbourne. 720pp, (2007)