CRCATSIH Program Leader: Tom Brideson

Program 1: Healthy Start, Healthy Life

Tom Brideson is a Kamilaroi man from Gunnedah, New South Wales. Since 2007 Tom has been the NSW State-wide Coordinator of the Aboriginal Mental Health Workforce Program located at Bloomfield Hospital as part of NSW Health’s Greater Western Area Health Service based in Orange. He was previously an Assistant Director of the Social Health Section within the Australian Government’s Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. Tom has a broad interest in areas that require improvements for Aboriginal people including health policy development, social and emotional wellbeing, clinical mental health care, suicide prevention and education.

Tom has a Diploma in Health Science (Mental Health), a Bachelor of Arts (Welfare Studies) and has completed the coursework of the Master of Applied Epidemiology (Indigenous Health) at the Australian National University. Since 1993 he has been actively involved in the Djirruwang Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health Program, and was Project Director there between 2002 and 2004.

More recently Tom has accepted a Visiting Fellowship on a part-time basis with the NSW Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at Newcastle University. His role is to advise on appropriate input and the development of structures to support the Centre’s Aboriginal Mental Health Strategy across all areas of research and educational activity. Tom is also currently overseeing the establishment of an Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing Centre on the grounds of Bloomfield Hospital, the first such centre in Australia to be based at a psychiatric hospital.

Tom has been a Program Leader for the CRC for Aboriginal Health since 2005. He sits on a range of local, State and national committees that are relevant to the mental health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people. Most recently he was appointed to the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ Indigenous sub-committee and is a consultant on the Indigenous HealthInfoNet’s social and emotional wellbeing sub-committee. Since 2007 Tom has been a member of the management committee of the Mental Health Services Conference (TheMHS), and was Convenor of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health Summer Forum in 2008.