Shows

Mother-Infant Forensic Psychiatry: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Videoconference

Presented by Anne Buist

Women largely want to be the best mothers they can - but just because they have a baby doesn't mean that are able to care for a baby safely, whether due to mental illness, personality disorder, drug and alcohol abuse or inability to protect from a dangerous partner. AAIMHI WA Branch are delighted to invite you to our first evening seminar of 2019, with Anne Buist joining us by videoconference from Melbourne.

Through case examples, Anne will look at the challenges of assessing whether parenting is "good enough" in these circumstances, including: balancing times for interview, observation and the use of questionnaires against time constraints; what evidence base there is; giving expert evidence; and the emotion cost of dealing with abusive parents, their injured infants and the ghosts of those murdered, as well as when recommending an infant is separated.

Anne Buist, MBBS,MMed,MD,FRANZCP, is Professor of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, Austin Health. For over twenty-five years she ran mother baby units in both the private and public sector.

Professor Buist received a four-million-dollar grant and led the beyondblue postnatal depression program 2001-5, screening over 40,000 women across Australia including the outback, CALD and indigenous women. Other research includes childhood abuse as a risk factor for perinatal depression, psychotropic drugs in breastmilk and use of video feedback in mother-infant therapy. She has trained in the Strange Situation Procedure, Adult Attachment Interview and Circle of Security.

Currently she oversees a perinatal outreach program, and continues work of the last twenty years doing parenting assessments for protective services and the courts in cases of mental illness and abuse, and provides expert evidence in cases of infanticide and child murder.

She has written three novels focused on perinatal forensic psychiatry; Medea’s Curse, Dangerous to Know and This I Would Kill For.

NOTE NEW VENUE: Telethon Kids Institute at Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH) Seminar Room, Level 5 West

(TKI is at the north end of PCH where you will find the yellow lifts)

Please meet at the reception area and you will be escorted to the seminar room