My Approach
In my work in caring for people facing difficult times in life, my aim is for people to have a place where they feel they can tell their story safely. This will only occur when a person knows that their story is respected and understood. That story can feel overwhelming and interfere a great deal with a person’s life. I aim to work with you to understand your story and I can bring to that understanding some of my psychological knowledge. Together you and I will then work toward determining the best way(s) to assist you to deal with these life struggles in ways that matter to you.
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I work from an integrative approach using various theories and interventions that best suit the many needs of you as a person in your current context.
About Judith
Judith has been qualified as a Psychologist in Australia since 1988 and has been an Endorsed Counselling Psychologist since 2009.
Judith has been working in the area of loss and grief since the 1990s. Through her psychology work and after a series of difficult personal experiences of loss, Judith realized that loss in its many forms is part of all adverse life events and so part of the lives of us all. Loss is part of so many life experiences – death, miscarriage, infertility, injury, accidents, life-threatening and chronic illness, ageing, relationship/family breakdown, out of home care, business or study failures, migration, trauma, natural disaster or loss of a dream to name but a few. Loss as a fundamental human experience joins us together. As a psychologist, Judith seeks to offer care for people facing loss in its many forms.
Judith became responsible for the establishment of a Loss and Grief Unit in the Centre for Primary Health Care in the School of Population Health at The University of QLD. It was here that she offered professional care for people facing loss as well as training for the community and professionals of different disciplines who work every day with people facing situations of loss. She has maintained her clinical work whilst also an academic career ensuring she was able to develop up-to-date knowledge and skills amongst counselling students and provisional psychologists.
As a result of her work in the loss and grief area, Judith has served on a number of national consultations for general bereavement, suicide bereavement and children’s grief and is involved with both national and international aid organizations. Judith has worked consistently to further the use of loss as an integrative concept within the health, welfare and education sectors which is articulated in the book “Understanding Loss: A Guide for Caring for Those Facing Adversity” (Routledge).
Judith is also a qualified Secondary School Teacher and Registered Nurse. She taught Mathematics and History in remote, rural and urban QLD secondary schools in the early 1980s. She has also held the position of Associate Professor in Counselling and Counselling Psychology at The University of Queensland Australia. In this position, she had been both the Director of the Master of Psychology Program and the Master of Counselling Program at UQ.
From 2010-2016 Judith also worked part-time as a Registered Nurse in Haematology and Oncology at The Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland.