IPA Profiles

Edmond Chiu, AM, MBBS, DPM, FRANZCP 
(Australia), Past President

Born in Hong Kong and reared in Guangzhou and Queensland with strong links to both Chinese and Italian communities, Edmond Chiu undertook his undergraduate training in medicine in Brisbane, Australia.  His psychiatric career developed in Melbourne under the mentorship of John Cade (discoverer of the psychotropic effects of lithium) and Brian Davies (Foundation Cato Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne). His international links were further strengthened by a period of work and study at Warlingham Park Hospital in SouthEast England during the 1970s.

One recurrent strand in Edmond Chiu’s career has been the development of new services for disadvantaged groups of patients. From the 1970s onwards he was central to the development of services for individuals with Huntington’s disease in the State of Victoria. He still runs a regular clinic in this area and co-ordinates the State database. It is a tribute to the quality of the service that has evolved that there is yet to be a suicide associated with the Victorian Huntington’s Disease Predictive Testing Program. His superb work in this field was honored by the award of Member of the Order of Australia in June 1988.

In the early 1980s after undertaking training on Tom Arie’s Nottingham course, Prof. Chiu commenced work in old age psychiatry at Melbourne’s leading geriatric hospital, Mount Royal Hospital. He was the first old age psychiatry academic appointed in Australia, commencing as Associate Professor of Psychiatry of Old Age, University of Melbourne, at Mont Park Hospital in March, 1989. With the subsequent closure of that facility, he moved to develop a model service in Melbourne’s aging inner eastern suburbs at St George’s Hospital, Kew.

Edmond Chiu was central to the creation of the Section of Psychiatry of Old Age (now Faculty of Psychiatry of Old Age) of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and was the section’s inaugural chairman from 1988-1996. His groundwork laid the foundation for the transition from section to faculty status with specialized sub-specialty qualifications and a certificate of training in the psychiatry of old age, now up and running across Australasia. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists awarded him the Year 2000 Medal of Honour for his contribution to the College.

An indefatigable organizer, Edmond Chiu has run a series of first rate conferences, most notably the World Psychiatric Association Geriatric Section Meeting in Melbourne in 1990 and IPA’s Seventh Congress, held in Sydney in 1995. In addition to a busy academic, research and publishing career, IPA’s President is avidly interested in the Australian cricket team and the arcane but splendid football code of Australian Rules Football, as a dedicated supporter of the Essendon Football Club.

He can be contacted at e.chiu@unimelb.edu.au.