Dr Brennan, Director of Nourish Psychology in Yarrawonga, became the recipient of the 2023 Australian Psychological Society’s Significant Contribution to Rural and Remote Communities award recently, acknowledging her work in the local region.
“It’s exciting and important for rural and remote psychology to be recognised,” Dr Brennan said.
“I have never received an award this big. Especially not recognising regional and remote work.
“I hope this award raises the profile of rural psychology training, which is addressing the skills shortage in regional areas, with pathways available for students locally at La Trobe University.
“I hope this brings more psychologists locally to the workforce.”
Dr Brennan was judged on four categories including education, special projects in rural settings, clinical work and research.
As part of the education sector, Dr Brennan has supported rural psychology training as a Professor in Psychology at La Trobe University in Wodonga, has supported rural placements as special projects in rural settings including being the past Coordinator of La Trobe University’s Masters of Professional Psychology which specifically targets the training of psychologists to work in rural and remote settings, runs both regional and metro private practices and her first project at La Trobe was research around the facilitators and barriers to people using Telehealth, whilst she now researches eating disorders and all that encompasses.
“What can we do to ensure that someone living in the country is getting the best available care, not second-best support and treatment, compared to those in metropolitan areas,” Professor Brennan asked.
“The telehealth and eating disorder projects were two examples of bringing evidence based work to regional communities.
“We would love to expand here, both our team and clinic as well as the work we do and what we can offer.
“We are trying to do more and more around research especially eating disorders which we are focussed on heavily at the moment.
“In our premises in the same building as Yarrawonga Osteopathic Clinic at 38 Hovell Street, there are two psychologists that are purely available for local patients.
“We could potentially have someone in our Yarrawonga offices all the time.
“The members of our Melbourne clinic also do telehealth with patients from Yarrawonga and surrounds and it would be great if we could build our team and clinic up more but this may take time.”
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