Paul B Fitzgerald Home Page

Update, 21st March 2022: I am proud and humbled to be taking up the position of ANU Head of School of Medicine and Psychology. I have had an extremely productive and satisfying 5 years at Epworth, working with amazing people in my team and in the clincial programs of a really excellent mental health service. I am now looking forward to a fantastic new challenge.
Since the start of 2017 I have been Professor of Psychiatry at Monash University and Director of the Epworth Centre for Innovation in Mental Health based at Epworth Camberwell. I am a qualified psychiatrist, have a Masters of Psychological Medicine and research PhD.
My main clinical and academic interest is in the development, evaluation and clinical translation of new therapies for mental health conditions. My research program has been mainly focussed on various forms of brain stimulation including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial alternating current stimulation, magnetic seizure therapy and deep brain stimulation.
Over the last 20 years I have led a considerable number of clinical trials, first helping to establish the effectiveness of TMS treatment in depression and then trying to improve TMS methods. To help ensure many patients can get helped from this treatment, I have established multiple clinical TMS services, and trained over 500 psychiatrists and nurses in the use of TMS therapy. I cofounded TMS Clinics Australia to try and increase access to high quality TMS around Australia. I recently led an application to the Medicare Services Advisory Committee that has resulted in a recommendation that TMS treatment for depression be funded through Medicare in Australia.
I am also a cofounder of Resonance Therapeutics, a company dedicated to developing a highly novel new treatment approach for patients with depression and other conditions.

Click here for a history of the process of obtaining a Medicare item number for rTMS treatment and some of the remaining public funding issues

Link to Medium story