Research leaders

Dr Aswin Ratheesh is a consultant psychiatrist with clinical, research and academic roles at Orygen. At Orygen, he leads multi-disciplinary clinical care for young people with complex mood and psychotic disorders and heads the early psychosis clinical stream. He is developing a new model of care for young people with bipolar disorders at Orygen. He also consults at a headspace setting where he works with young people with high-prevalence disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Dr Ratheesh is a Post-Doctorate Research Fellow with the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. He recently completed his PhD examining clinical precursors for bipolar disorder among young people. He is interested in understanding the barriers to care for young people with bipolar disorders, improving psychological and pharmacological interventions for these young people, understanding the relationships between bipolar disorder and substance use, depression and psychosis, as well as understanding the development of risk for serious mental disorders among teenagers. 

Dr Ratheesh is also involved with supervising, teaching and facilitating workshops for medical students, psychiatry trainees, as well as for clinicians. He is an investigator in several ongoing NHMRC funded clinical trials at Orygen, one of which relates to a new psychological intervention for BD. Dr Ratheesh is also an Associate Editor for the psychiatric journal, BMC psychiatry.