About Dr Michelle Fryer
(MB ChB, FRANZCP, Cert Child Adol Psych, Grad Dip Mental Health PIMH)
Parent-Infant, Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist
I’m a senior Parent-Infant, Child, Adolescent, and Family Psychiatrist and practice on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane. I have more than 15 years’ experience in public and private practice, across in-patient and out-patient settings. I worked in England, New Zealand and most recently Australia, qualifying as a psychiatrist in Australia in 2002.
I’m a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and an Accredited (specialist) Member of the Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I’m a recipient of the Connell-Werry Prize in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I’ve completed additional formal qualifications in Health Management and in Perinatal and Infant Mental Health.
I’m committed to ongoing professional development and maintenance of a high standard of care, that is up to date along with patient-centred. I’ve undertaken training in a range of individual and family therapies and am experienced in the careful and judicious use of medication where it is indicated. My extensive experience and skill base mean I tailor treatment to the needs of patient and family.
My experience includes
- Providing clinical leadership and psychiatric expertise to general child and adolescent mental health clinics. These clinics consist of nurses plus allied health clinicians providing assessment and interventions for young people with moderate to severe, complex mental illness and other difficulties.
- Working collaboratively with schools and other education services, child protection services and non-government agencies who are supporting families.
- Consultation-liaison psychiatry. Working in collaboration with paediatricians to meet the needs of young people with both mental and physical illness.
- In-patient child and adolescent mental health care. These units provide intensive care to young people with serious mental illness requiring hospitalisation.
- Evolve Therapeutic Service. A highly regarded specialist service working with children who have suffered abuse and neglect and are in the care of the State. I was the consultant psychiatrist for one of the original pilot sites and heavily involved in the roll out and development of this service, which is now established throughout Queensland.
- Gold Coast Child and Youth Mental Health Service Clinical Director.
- I worked in this role for over two years, providing clinical expertise and leadership, guiding service development and delivery.
- Medico-legal assessments. Assessing parents and children for the Family Court.
- Assertive Mobile Youth Outreach Service. I currently work with this specialist service working with high-risk and hard to engage adolescents and their families.
- Infant Mental Health. Therapeutic work with parents and their infants where issues such as infant illness or prematurity, parental mental illness, substance use difficulties or personal experience of childhood adversity is interfering with the developing parent-infant relationship.
- Speciality training as a psychiatrist includes training in pharmacology, individual (including psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioural and other modalities), family and group psychotherapies. I have built upon this foundational training over the years with further training including in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, inter-personal therapy, motivational interviewing, attachment-based family therapy, systemic family therapy and parent-infant dyadic therapies.
- Circle of Security Parenting Program registered facilitator. The program is based on decades of research about how secure parent-child relationships can be supported and strengthened.