Richard Bryant (psychologist)

Career

In 1989 Bryant commenced working at Westmead Hospital as a clinical psychologist, responsible for managing trauma and burns patients. In 1993 he established the Traumatic Stress Clinic at Westmead Hospital. In 1995 he joined the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales as a Lecturer, and was promoted to Professor in 2002. Bryant was appointed a Scientia Professor in 2005. In 2009 he was awarded an inaugural Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, and in 2014 a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellowship.

Bryant has worked on many Australian and international projects aimed at reducing PTSD and other mental health disorders following trauma exposure. These include the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, the 2004 Asian tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina. For example, he worked with the Thai Ministry of Health to develop a mental health initiative to manage the effects of the tsunami on mental health. Following Hurricane Katrina he was invited to co-develop a mental health protocol for managing disasters in the USA. Bryant adapted his protocol in the aftermath of the major Black Saturday bushfires in Australia, which government authorities adopted as the mental health response to the disaster. In addition, he served on the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 Working Group on Traumatic Stress Disorders and the World Health Organisation's ICD-11 Traumatic Stress Advisory Group to develop the new diagnostic definitions of traumatic stress disorders.

Traumatic Stress Clinic

Bryant's Traumatic Stress Clinic, founded in 1993, is a major not-for-profit treatment centre. It has conducted many research activities pertaining to the development, maintenance, and treatment of traumatic stress. It conducts treatment programs for PTSD, Prolonged Grief Disorder, PTSD in emergency service workers (police, fire, and ambulance workers), and PTSD in journalists.

Research interests

Acute stress disorder

Acute stress disorder was a new disorder introduced in 1994 to describe acute traumatic stress in the initial month after trauma that is predictive of chronic PTSD. Bryant is widely recognised as the world's leading expert on acute stress disorder. On the basis of numerous longitudinal research, he has developed the prevailing measurement tools of acute stress disorder, identified many of the biological, cognitive, and behavioural indices of acute stress, and pioneered the major treatment studies of acute stress disorder. His assessment instruments have been translated into over 15 languages, and his treatment protocols are the gold standard for early intervention after trauma.

When acute stress disorder was introduced it was argued that its emphasis on dissociative symptoms in the acute phase after trauma (such as emotional numbing, dissociative amnesia, and depersonalisation) are strongly predictive of chronic PTSD. Bryant's work challenged the fundamental premise of the initial conceptualisation that dissociative responses shortly after trauma are seminal in predicting PTSD, and this resulted in a major shift in the DSM-5 so that emphasis was not placed on dissociation and acute stress disorder was not intended to predict PTSD.

Posttraumatic stress disorder

Bryant has conducted numerous treatment trials on Post-traumatic stress disorder with a focus on cognitive behaviour therapy. In terms of treatment of PTSD, he has also conducted the first studies that showed genetic markers of treatment response, brain regions using functional MRI and structural MRI to predict treatment response, and how cognitive behaviour therapy alters brain function in PTSD patients. He has also conducted seminal studies on the development of PTSD by assessing people prior to trauma and subsequent to the trauma; these studies have mapped core psychophysiological and cognitive risk factors for developing PTSD.

Grief

Bryant has conducted some of the first studies into cognitive factors that underpin Prolonged Grief Disorder from normal bereavement, including memory styles, appraisals, and how people imagine their futures. Bryant has also conducted the first studies of different neural circuits between Prolonged Grief Disorder and other psychological conditions. In addition, he conducted a major controlled trial of treating Prolonged Grief Disorder that demonstrated that reliving memories of the loss is critical to optimising treatment response.

Global mental health

Bryant has collaborated with the World Health Organisation to develop a mental health intervention that can be trained to lay health providers in countries that lack mental health specialists. The intervention (termed Problem Management Plus) has been developed to ensure that Low and Middle Income Countries can scale up the intervention to reduce mental health problems following adversity.

Awards

• Royal Society of New South Wales James Cook Medal, 2020
• International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies Lifetime Achievement Award, 2018
• Association for Psychological Science James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award, 2018
• Australian Society of Psychiatric Research Founders Medal, 2016
• Australian Laureate Fellowship, 2009
• Australian Association for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award, 2006
• International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies Robert F. Laufer Award, 2001
• Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Scientific Research, 2000
• Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Academy Medal, 1999
• Companion in the Order of Australia (AC), for his work in Indigenous and refugee mental health, and as an adviser to government and international organisations"