Carolyn Quadrio

• PhD, FRANZCP, DPM, MBBS
• Professor (Associate) at UNSW Sydney

Objective Women face considerable barriers in pursuing careers in academic psychiatry. Methods A group of Australian and New Zealand academic women psychiatrists convened in September 2022 to identify and propose solutions to increase opportunities for women in academic psychiatry. Results Limiting factors were identified in pathways to academia...

Globally, the call for Family-Friendly (FF) workplaces is loud and clear. However, this call is inaudible in medical workplaces, despite both well-established benefits of FF workplaces across businesses and well-known effects of work–family conflict on the well-being and practice of doctors. We aimed to use the Delphi consensus methodology to: (i)...

This chapter provides an overview of institutional child sexual abuse in Australia, both historical and recent, including the landmark Royal Commission of 2018. The author reports on a number of subgroups: from the last century, the victims of forced migration from the UK and the 'uncontrollable' girls of troubled families; and from more recent tim...

This is a clinical review of 7 families of Holocaust survivors who presented for treatment because of problems with an adolescent of the third generation. In 3 cases the problem was anorexia, and the remaining 4 had various clinical presentations, mostly related to separation-individuation issues. A common thread in the narratives that unfolded was...

Adding to an emerging literature on individual psychotherapy with bipolar disorder, this case study describes intensive psychotherapy with a 39-year-old woman who had a rapid cycling disorder. She had been treated over several years with a range of psychotropic medications, cognitive psychotherapy, and several courses of electroconvulsive therapy,...

Aim: Summarise the literature to date concerning carer burden and available services for patients with early-onset AD (EOAD). Method: Literature search using terms "early onset dementia" or "early onset Alzheimer's disease" plus "carer". A case is presented to illustrate some of the carer and family issues and offer practical guidelines for managem...

Self-psychology describes a psychoanalytic model developed by Heinz Kohut and based upon a systemic concept of the ‘self-object’, a system of self and object which differentiates progressively from an early symbiotic fusion at birth to healthy interdependence at around three years of age. These stages of differentiation were originally described by...

To describe family conflict in cases of dementia referred to the Guardianship Tribunal of New South Wales, Australia. The file notes of 50 cases of family and systems conflict in cases of dementia presented to the Guardianship Tribunal were examined. Demographics, MMSE score, and type and severity of dementia were recorded. The documents and eviden...

Written in 1998, this paper is my perspective on the history of Family Therapy in Australia. It is written from my position as one who has been privileged to be a part of that history and to have my own professional and personal development intertwined with it. The perspective I offer here is entirely my own.

This was a conference presentation in 2003, at an AIC meeting.

Based on research and data, this is a feminist analysis of psychiatry in Australia and the situation of women, as patients and as psychiatrists, including psychiatrists in training. An historical analysis of women and madness leads into more recent constructions of gender and mental illness that are often neglected in the biological paradigm of the...

In interview with Kasia Kozlowska, Melbourne-born psychiatrist Carolyn Quadrio describes the impact of growing up in a Greek migrant family, the significant influences on her choice of profession, and the ways in which she gradually developed a feminist position simultaneously with embracing a systemic perspective on ‘depression’ and other diagnost...

That sexual abuse in therapy occurs predominantly with male perpetrators and female patients is a phenomenon that requires analysis in terms of gender relations. Such an analysis is undertaken here from the perspective of feminist psychoanalytic and psychosocial theories. Data informing the analysis are derived from assessments of 40 women who expe...

In suggesting a psychology of gender difference I am obliged to weave my way very delicately between the social constructivists and post-modernists on the one hand, and the essentialists or maternalists and French psychoanalytic feminists on the other — keeping my head low as well to avoid being spotted by the sociobiologists. This review is intend...

The author examines eight cases in which women have been abused by their therapists. She outlines how clinical, legal and religious institutions were either less than helpful or overtly involved in cover ups of the abuse. The author provides an overview of the complexities of detection, assessment, treatment and prevention of abuse in therapeutic r...

Numerous contemporary analyses have challenged traditional models of female psychosexual development, identifying their norms as implicitly androcentric. Femaleness has been regarded as derivative or deviant, as less and "other" than maleness. Alternative, woman-centred, models emphasise three major aspects of female psychosexual development: affil...

A brief review of the problem of impaired therapists is followed by a more comprehensive review of sexual relationships arising in and following psychotherapy. The prevalence of this latter problem is approximately 10%. Offenders are predominantly male, one half are said to be "ruthless" and "exploitative", whilst the remainder are often "lovesick"...

Gender disadvantage within the professions significantly affects the development of women doctors, resulting in morbidity and less than optimal development. Paradoxically, for a profession primarily concerned with the study of the vicissitudes of human development, psychiatry in Australia and New Zealand has yet to articulate those issues which bea...

Families are described as “over‐attached” whose members respond anxiously to the otherwise normal unfolding of separation‐individuation processes and in the absence of past traumatic separations. It is observed that “anxious attachment” occurs with over‐availability just as with under‐availability of attachment figures and that attachment is an int...

Addressing the theme of the 1986 National Family Therapy Conference, Developmental and Systemic Perspectives: Living with the Interface, this paper examines those two perspectives, their strengths and their weaknesses, and argues for a synthesis of what is best in each.

Self-psychology describes a psychoanalytic model developed by Heinz Kohut and based upon a systemic concept of the "self-object', a system of self and object which differentiates progressively from an early symbiotic fusion at birth to healthy interdependence at around three years of age. These stages of differentiation were originally described by...

Marital systems of agoraphobic women may reinforce or support the phobic condition and in some cases entire families are affected. Four case histories are presented in which agoraphobia and related disturbances and alcoholism are traced through three generations. Other studies are reviewed relating agoraphobia to alcoholism, examining the character...

A fairy tale character and a nursery rhyme are used to dramatize the marital systems of women with agoraphobia. This systems perspective emphasizes that the disorder is more than an individual or intrapsychic one, that it is an interpersonal or marital adjustment and that the phobic symptoms of the wife also provide a defence for her husband. Rapun...

A marital system is described which features an unfaithful and narcissistic husband, Peter Pan, and a long suffering and depressed wife, Wendy. The dynamics of their individual adjustments are examined as well as the symbiotic nature of the dyadic relationship. Other characters take their parts--Tinker Bell, Tiger Lily, and Little Lost Boys. Peter'...

The use of psychiatric evidence in Family Law Courts considering custody disputes is questioned. It is postulated that such evidence if often prejudiced, not always related to parental competence, and is morally and politically questionable.

The case presented is of a young man hospitalized twice for schizophrenic disorder before the commencement of family therapy. The therapy which dealt with the family system, specific pathological communication patterns and intra-psychic conflicts, is discussed. As the parents of the young man confronted their inter- and intra-personal problems, the...