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Rotary International President Gordon McInally visits Melbourne

Rotary International President Gordon R McInally 2023-2024

    Gordon McInally, a member of the Rotary Club of South Queensferry, West Lothian, Scotland, revealed the 2023-24 presidential theme, Create Hope in the World, during the Rotary International Assembly in Orlando, Florida, USA, on 9 January 2023. He urged members to promote peace in troubled nations, help those affected by conflict, and maintain the momentum of initiatives begun by past leaders.

'The goal is to restore hope — to help the world heal from destructive conflicts and, in turn, to help us achieve lasting change for ourselves,'

Rotary members should offer hope to those affected by mental health challenges — a crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people have lost family members, many more have found their social networks uprooted, and young people especially have had their educational and developmental paths interrupted. As a result, more people around the world are facing mental health issues. And yet, seeking assistance is often perceived as a sign of weakness.

'Nothing could be further from the truth,' McInally said. 'Reaching out for help is courageous — and continuing on a path toward wellness is even more so.'

He added that Rotary will work to improve mental health services in the next year and beyond. Rotary should be known as an organisation that takes care of its members as well as the people it serves, McInally said. 'Any mental health professional will tell you that by helping others, we essentially help ourselves.'

PROFESSOR PATRICK MCGORRY

    Professor Patrick McGorry is an Irish-born, Australian psychiatrist known world-wide for his development and scaling up of early intervention, youth mental health services, mental health innovation, advocacy and reform. He is executive director of Orygen, Professor of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, and founding editor of the journal “Early Intervention in Psychiatry”. 

• 2005 he led the advocacy resulting in the establishment of the National Youth Mental Health Foundation, which later became Headspace, of which he is a founding board member.
• 2010 he was selected as Australian of the Year and became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).
• 2013 he received the Annual Research Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Washington DC.
• 2015 was awarded the Lieber Prize for Schizophrenia Research by the US-based Brain and Behaviour Foundation.
• 2016 he became the first psychiatrist to be elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
• 2018 he received the Schizophrenia International Research Society Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 2019 he received the Humanitarian Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the NHMRC Research Excellence Award. 
• 2019-2020 he was Chair of the Expert Advisory Committee to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

Professor McGorry has published over 980 publications, with 47,266 citations and a “h” index of 112 (Scopus). He has played key advocacy and advisory roles to government on health system reform in Australia and many parts of the world.

He is President of the International Association for Youth Mental Health, Past-President of the Schizophrenia International Research Society, Past-president of the Society for Mental Health Research, and was Founding President and is now Treasurer of the IEPA: Early Intervention in Mental Health. He is also a Founding Board Member of Australians for Mental Health

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