Alison Yung, MD

Professor Alison Yung is Professor of Psychiatry and NHMRC Principal Research Fellow at the Institute for Mental and Physical Health and Clinical Translation (IMPACT), Deakin University and the Centre for Young People’s Mental Health and Orygen, The University of Melbourne. She is President of the IEPA.

Alison has been researching the early stages of psychotic disorder since 1994. She established a specialized research-clinical service, the PACE Clinic, that manages young people at risk of developing a psychotic illness. The instrument she created to assess risk for psychosis, the Comprehensive Assessment of At Risk Mental States (CAARMS) has been translated into 18 languages and is used throughout the world, both for clinical and research purposes. She is also interested in exercise as an intervention for mental illnesses and in improving the physical health of people with mental disorders.

Alison received the Lilly Oration Award for prominence in psychiatric research in 2009, and the Richard J Wyatt Award in 2010, for exceptional contributions to the area of early intervention in psychosis. In 2019 she was awarded the Society for Mental Health Founders Medal, in recognition of a significant contribution to psychiatric research and in 2020 received the Outstanding Translational Research Award from the Schizophrenia International Research Society. In 2014 and 2016 and she was named as one of the “world’s most influential scientific minds” by Thomson Reuters. She has over 400 publications and from 2016 to 2021 she was named as a “Highly Cited Researcher” by Clarivate Analytics.