THE CONFAB WITH MICHAEL G IN CONVERSATION WITH PROF HENRY BRODATY

Professor Henry Brodaty AO is a leading Australian geriatric psychiatrist, researcher, and the 2026 Senior Australian of the Year recognized for pioneering work in dementia prevention, diagnosis, and care. He serves as Scientia Professor of Ageing and Mental Health and Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing at the University of New South Wales.

In 2012, Henry co-founded the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing and led internationally significant research that enhanced the world’s understanding of risk and prevention. His large Maintain Your Brain trial demonstrated that straightforward, cost-effective, targeted interventions can profoundly delay onset and even prevent dementia. 

Professor Henry Brodaty is transforming the diagnosis, care and prevention of dementia – improving countless lives, both in Australia and around the world. 

Join me on the Confab to gain an understanding of his life journey and passions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome to the Confab with Michael G on the people powered radio 2XFM 98.3. We are streaming online and on demand on 2xfm.org.au. Tonight our guest is Professor Henry Pradati. He's an AO and is the 2026 Senior Australian of the Year and a globally renowned pioneer in the research, diagnosis and prevention of dementia. His current role is Professor of Aging and Mental Health and co-director of the Centre for Healthy Brain Aging at the University of New South Wales at Sydney. Tonight we'll get to know a little bit about his life journey and passions. Welcome to the Confab with Michael G. Welcome, Henry to Two Double X. Thank you for being a guest on our programme today. Now we made the first track a beautiful piece of music. Would you like to introduce that track? Who is the performer? And most importantly, why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

So the piece is El Go's Concerto, Elgar's Concerto for Cello, and it's performed by Jacqueline Dupre. And I think I first heard this 30 years ago, and I was so moved by it. And I just love the cello and and the the the melody of this and it really sort of digs deep into my soul. And Jacqueline Dupre, I mean, so tragically, she died with multiple sclerosis at a young age, and she was being conducted by Daniel Barenbaum, who became her husband, and uh so he nursed her until the end. But uh it's a beautiful piece and it's a real classic piece that people people love all over the world.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

Now you told me, Henry, that you could remember way back to in your early childhood. Tell me a little about your little bit about your mum and dad.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

So my parents uh from Poland, uh they uh met in about 1939, and uh my father then was nineteen and my mother was similarly aged, and uh in that year the uh uh Germany invaded Poland on the first of September, and there was a b beginning or continuation then of the Holocaust that occurred. So they escaped east, they fled to Russia, uh they spent time in uh labor camps in Uzbekistan and Tazakhstan. Uh they developed various illnesses such as uh malaria, titus. They had a daughter uh who died en route, and uh it was a very tough time. So they uh they didn't have any profession. And so when they came to Australia, well, between that they went back to to Warsaw after the war and found that there was no one left. That's where my father's family was from. My mother was from eastern Poland, which saved their life because they were far east as the Nazis approached. Um and so they ended up in a displaced person camp in Germany, just outside of Munich, uh, which is where I was born. And they arrived here in 1948. I was 13 months, so you can do the maths, and they were penniless. Uh, they had no profession. And uh luckily the certain Jewish charities helped them and that helped them get papers here, a charity called The Joint. Uh a cousin in London also supported them, and an unknown benefactor here in Sydney provided sponsorship. Uh that gentleman ran a timber business. He had timber yards, and so my father's first job was stacking timber uh in a timber yard. So this was a man who finished high school, he was sort of like on his gap year uh when the war broke out. And he was a very bright man. He was uh an A-grade chess player, uh, he loved playing cards, bridge, and poker, and uh he had to live by his wits and he got some work in the in the rag trade, eventually established his own uh ladies' knitwear factory, which grew and did did did quite well eventually. But um so we arrived here, as I said, in 48, and my earliest memory is we lived in a single bedroom in a boarding house in King's Cross. The three of us, I I didn't have a room till I was seven. And uh I'm gonna be going to kindergarten at Woolamaloo and um I didn't know any different, but it it was hard. We didn't have a kitchen or a bathroom that was sort of all shared facilities. It was a little kitchenette and and a toilet. And uh, you know, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and you know, looking through the rails of the cot as it were, and seeing my my parents there. Uh and as the business my father was in improved, they were able to pay key money to get a flat in Bondo. So most of your listeners won't know what key money is. But back in the 50s there was rent control. So there were a lot of uh flats where no one had apartments or units there. That was a concept that arrived later. Um, but some people had flats with where the could rent the rent was was limited. And I I know that in our flat it was 10 shillings a week in Kalua Street Bondo. Um and you could pay the current tenant of that flat to take over the tenancy uh and to pay that small rental. But I don't know how much it was, probably a thousand or two thousand pounds. You paid that tenant, and then you took over the rental and you had the rent control flat. And so we moved there when I was seven. I remember I couldn't believe I had a roof for myself. It was such a luxury. So that was uh that was really sort of the early years of my childhood. I uh went to Bondi Beach Primary School uh and uh started in uh oh sorry, I went to transition at Randwick uh Randwick's uh primary school first, uh, because that's where my father's factory was. And so they would drop me there and then um pick me up at the end of the end of school.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

Well, Henry, before we go too far down that track, can you you said you were you moved into Bondo when you were seven? Yes. Now reflecting back to a very interesting part of Sydney being King's Cross, can you remember what that was like in in that early period? Was I mean it was a very interesting place to be because King's Cross back then was pretty tough and rough. Yes. Did you have much of a way of memory of of that part of your life?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Not really. Not really. I remember I remember being walked down by a friend of my father down to the kindergarten at Woolamaloo. Um, but I don't remember the cross itself. Uh there were some friends my parents had in in that neighborhood. So King Cross was a sort of a a magnet for uh recent uh immigrants. And uh there were a lot of people from different nationalities there. It was a real melting pot. And I I remember walking around those streets and going to visit some of those people, but I don't think I ever experienced any of that seedy side that I became much more aware of in my late teens.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

Okay. Now, your mum again was she she was uh in the same situation as your dad, hadn't had an opportunity for education beyond perhaps um high school or or primar or primary school?

SPEAKER_00 14:50

No, high school, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

High school here. So did your mum in i of of course in in in our history, mums played a role in homes. Dad went out and was a brandwear, and it and from what you're saying, your father came in, started very low in the system, and then ended up running a company. What was the expectation? What was your expectation of your mum?

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Oh, she joined she worked in the factory with my father. She was working on the sewing machine, she was there, uh they were doing this together. So um once I went to school, I would what they call the latchkey child. I used to walk home from Bondo Beach to my to our flat and uh let myself in or played on the streets with other kids. Um but no, they worked together um throughout those years.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

And you were talking about going to uh Ramwick in the early days of your your childhood and schooling. Was that a were you did you notice around you a multicultural, which you call now multicultural uh demographic in that school, or were there just generally uh white Australian children?

SPEAKER_00 15:57

I I don't remember the kids at the transitional class. Uh it was it was one year or maybe a bit less I was there. I I certainly remember uh my time at Bondo Beach Primary.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

What was it what was that like, Henry? Was it a a multicultural school at that point?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah, yeah, there was quite a lot of uh quite a lot of people from other uh cultures. Um a lot of Jewish people had migrated to uh to Bondo East, and so it wasn't the highly expensive place it is now. And uh I uh I was um I was in first class, but at the end of first class, um I was promoted to third class, so I didn't do second class, uh, which was a big mistake, I think. I I think it was because my mother may have been pushy. Um I was okay academically with that, but socially I was like the youngest in the class, and I remember that one of the first days we had to sing a song that we learned in fr in our previous year, and half the class sang one song that'd come from let's say uh 2A and the other half sang the other song from 2B. I didn't know any of the songs, so I was really out of it. And socially I was pretty inept, and uh that took many years to catch up to my peers.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

And and so in their school had a multicultural background, what were the teachers like?

SPEAKER_00 17:29

They were all men for a start. Um sorry, in the uh infant school, that's first class, they were women. So I remember Miss Dawson and Miss O'Neill. Um probably misses, but we all call them Miss. Uh I remember our teachers in uh I can remember name each one of my teachers. We had a male teacher, uh third, fourth, fifth, and sixth class. And uh my teacher in third class actually became a friend later in life. I'll come back to that. Uh my teacher in fourth class was a um a Gallipoli survivor. He had one arm. And uh, you know, he was very prompt because of that. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

And from an academic perspective, Henry, or even a sort of a guiding light, a mentoring perspective, those teachers you've just just mentioned then, were they contributing in a way of your development? You talked about that you were you had issues being advanced too quickly, perhaps through the grades. Was there any teachers perhaps aware that that may have been a concern and perhaps focused on or helped you through that?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I don't think so. Um I think there were about 40 kids in the class, and you know we had those screw-down desks with ink wells that you had a had a nib a pen with a nib on it that you had to dim dip into the nink into the ink to write. Uh my writing was was terrible, so I was destined to become a doctor. And it uh never got better. The uh the teachers I don't know, they didn't really seem connected to me as a person, but more as a pupil and making sure I learned things. Um I remember often getting to trouble in those days. We used to get the cane if you got into trouble. And if you were in big trouble, you went to the headmaster, you get six of the best across your hands. Um once across my f my legs and never against never against my buttock, though. Um and so um you know, it was the days when we used to get milk-free milk at playtime, and it was always stacked up in the playground. So by the time we got to it at about, I don't know, 10 30 or so. It was warm um and not very pleasant. I used to bring a flavored chocolate straw. These were inventions that they had then. You could uh put the straw in, and as you suck the milk up, it dissolved the chocolate inside that straw and uh made it much more palatable.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

And Henry, were there were there other things outside of school that were interesting you? Or maybe was you did you develop a bunch of friends in Bonloy?

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah, I had a few friends. Um remember the one kid called John who um I really liked. And uh, you know, we used to play there was a quarry near our in we both lived on Kalua Street, but there was a quarry there where now there's a block of flats and a service station. And we used to play there, you know, the cops and robbers. I used to, you know, run across the road and I got hit by a truck once doing that. Um luckily I didn't have any serious damage. Um but particularly because I was at home by myself after school and uh you know walk to school and walk home and then display, there wasn't much in the way of homework in those days.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

And so let's take you now to the next level secondary school. Where did you where did you go for secondary school?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Uh I went to Rambick Boys High. Um and um there were a lot of uh kids there that I knew and became friendly with. I was I already had some friends in um fifth class and sixth class. Um one of the kids was uh his name was Chris. Uh he arrived as a refugee from Poland, and because uh it was known that I was Polish background, uh they sat him next to me. I didn't speak Polish and he didn't speak English. And he then became my my best man and we're still very close friends. Um another guy he he came in uh about 56. So a lot of Hungarians arrived in Sydney then. That was after the revolution there. And uh a lot of the Hungarian people were able to exit um because Hungary had been under Soviet rule, and then there was the uh invasion by the tanks, the Russian tanks, when the Hungarians tried to shake off their communist yoke, and uh he's still. One of my closest friends, and he um is my dentist actually. And uh so I've got a lot of friends from that time, and so most of them most of them went on to Rambeek Boys High, where uh we we became uh quite we we became very close.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

And was there a reason why your mum and dad decided to send you to a boys' high school, or was that the choice that you wanted to follow?

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Oh, that was the that was normal that there were there wasn't any co-ed schools. So there wasn't any money to go to a private school, so you went to your local school. That was my local high school and my loc my local primary school. So it wasn't the choice, it was what was available. Um you know, boys and girls' schools were very unusual uh co-ed schools were pretty unusual. My wife went to uh Marubra Bay High School, uh, which was coed, and she was in the first or second year of that school when it opened, and it was quite revolutionary to have coed public high school.

SPEAKER_03 23:02

And Henry, were there any subjects at this point in your educational development where you started to get an interest in in following?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Well, I I was I was always good at maths, uh and I I really loved math, it just seemed so logical and um had an intrinsic beauty to it. So I I I understood maths easily and and grasped concepts. And I liked English. I uh I in fact at high school the only prize I got I was on the o on the honor board was for English in the intermediate certificate. No, I liked writing and I liked reading and I like maths. I was um I I was lucky that I was pretty easy easy for me to to do well academically.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

And and was that because of the teachers you had, or were they supportive teachers, or anyone that stood out that helped you in your English and math side of your studies?

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Not really. Not really. Um they just taught the syllabus. I I don't think I connected at a personal level with any of the teachers. There were some that I liked more than others. I did like my maths teacher in senior high school before the leading certificate. Uh he's a nice guy. Um like the the subjects I did in high school were uh English, maths one, maths two, um I think French Woodwork. That's the only subject ever failed with woodwork. Uh I remember the teacher, I I got 49 out of 100. He wouldn't pass me. Um, but uh I think he had it in for me, maybe. Um so I uh you know, then we did I did physics, chemistry, and uh Latin. We had to do Latin. We didn't have to, but I chose to do Latin the first three years.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

It seemed it seems, Henry, there that it's a very broad range and a very academic uh focus of what you were doing. Was your mum as your mum and dad were not educated, and that's not by choice, but by the circumstances that they found themselves in and the world found itself in, did they take an interest in what you were doing at school, or were they leaving that for you?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah. I think they were educated, Michael. That they uh I mean completing high school in the 1940s was the most that most people did. We didn't have 30% population going to university. Uh my parents were always um talking about academic achievement. And it was it's a common thing amongst refugees. Each wave of refugees sees education as the way to um lift their their quality of life. And so, you know, my father said, Did you come in the first six? That was his goal for me. And I did, I came the first six in the year every year. Um, and you know, they wanted to know my subjects and how I was going, and they'd always ask about that. I remember you know, reciting when I was in primary school, the you know, the times tables. See, in those days we had to learn all those things off by road, and which means now that if I go to check out at a cash register or in a supermarket or whatever, I can calculate faster than they can calculate on their calculators. Um but could because that was drummed into us at that time. So education was a high priority for my parents, and uh eventually when I finished, we'll come to this in a minute, but when I finished high school, um I there was no question that that I was it went without question that I was going to go to university and the question was what I would do. And uh you know, I thought I might do maths, I might do something else. My father was very sure that I was going to do medicine because medicine was a portable career. If you're a lawyer, you you know English law in Australia, you know, New South Wales law specifically, it's not portable. If something bad happens in Australia, if you're a doctor, you can go to another country. So it was a safety thing as well, having experienced what they had, losing a daughter, uh losing many of their family, being displaced. Um security was having an education that gave you a passport, not a physical passport, but an entry into other countries should that need occur.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

And what was your journey then into university?

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Well, um I I did well at at uh at school, I got a Commonwealth Scholarship, um, I got a good pass in the leaving certificate. And so as I said, I was the youngest in the year, so I started university at the age of 16, and uh I went straight through medicine. I finished when I was 22, and they were great years at university. I I really feel sorry for kids now who go to university. They don't have that university life. There are various uh things you can join, you have various activities you can do, and you meet people, and it's uh you know, the people I met are still my friends and very close friends.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

Can we reflect back on that university? You're talking about the social side, which is a which is why a lot of people go to university and perhaps study arts, but in in the medical side, where how how was that what you expected? You know, you come into university first year, is that what you expected?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

It was fantastic. Like orientation work, you'd go along and it still happens. There are all these stalls up there, join the drama club, join the you know oniswa. I was at Sydney University where they um their newspaper was oniswa. There there was film clubs, there was walking groups, there was whatever you wanted to do, you could join. With you know, the people with arts, they had pretty uh pretty good time because the demands on their time were just you know a few lectures a week, and then they'd give me the library writing essays or whatever they had to do. In medicine, it was a very structured program. Every day was full, each day, and so you didn't have as much time to socialize during university days.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Well, can we pause there for the moment? In part two, we'll talk about perhaps your experiences in in at at uh at one of the hospitals or the hospital system that you would have to go through in in part two and that lovely journey that has taken you to where you are now. But before we go into that part two, would you like to introduce track two? What is the title of the track and why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Michael, this is the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Um, and it's a very stirring piece of music. Um I often hear it when I go to the movies, the Palace Cinema. They they play this as one of their uh introductions while people are waiting to see the movie. And it builds up to such a tension, and it's it's it really I think is uplifting. And uh that's why I like it. I like Beethoven, he's my favorite composer. I think most people who like classical music uh really have a penchant for Beethoven, and I could listen to him all day, and uh I I just think he's such a genius. But I I love this piece of music, this track, and I I like pretty well all of his music.

SPEAKER_03 37:11

Now, we talked a little bit about your university studies. Now, would you like to just broaden that out? What what did that involve?

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Well, the first three years of medicine at Sydney were pre-clinical years, so we had lectures in many subjects and we did some work in laboratories, but we also did anatomy where we had to dissect a body. So seven of us around the table for two years uh dissecting that body, and then from fourth year on we started having clinical placements. So my base hospital was Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and I was there for three years, but we also did stints at the uh women's hospital, which is now closed, uh the Royal Children's Hospital, which was then at Camperdown, and um I went to Rachel Forster Hospital, uh, which was a um a hospital in Redfern, uh mainly for Aboriginal people. So it was it was quite a rich uh experience uh going through there. And we also went uh we did different subjects like surgery, medicine, obstetrics, ENT, eyes, skin, etc. And then each year we'd have exams, and uh then at the end of six years it did the final exams.

SPEAKER_03 38:21

Henry, what was the first day you've you've been studying, you've done dissection, and now you're in a hospital situation. When you walked in on the first day of that uh period of your studies, was it what you expected?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Well, my first day as a hospital resident, you mean?

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Yeah, as a resident, yeah. So the the system then is we became junior resident medical officers. I got a position at RPAH, and uh I remember we all had to wear white, white shorts, white socks, white shoes, white shirt, tie. And uh I remember one of my friends and I were on the respiratory ward of the Page Chest Pavilion, and it was a daunting experience. We didn't know what we were doing. Uh what they teach you in medicine is different to what you learn on the job. And the real education starts when you actually start working in the field and learning how to take blood, how to uh put up cannulas, uh how to order tests, how to uh make decisions. But we were the junior people. So there was a registrar who we really interacted with every day, and uh they would guide us, and then above the registrar be the consultant. And these were the people we looked up to.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

So at what time in that period do you were you put in a situation where your decisions matter?

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Probably not till I was a registrar myself. Because as a junior resident um we really we we were the ghosts, we had to go and do things that were asked of us to do. We'd be writing up notes, we'd be ordering tests, we'd be examining patients, getting histories, doing um in in getting the intake of new patients. Um and we worked hard. So we were on a 182 or 183 roster. So that means every second or third night we'd be working at night and we have to sleep in at the hospital. In those days, junior staff didn't get any overtime. There was no overtime. It was free labor and uh for for the hospitals and there was no limit. So for example, when I was a registrar, if I was on for the weekend and I'd be the medical registrar for the whole of RPA, I'd be on from 8:30 Friday morning till 5 p.m. Monday afternoon, and you just grabbed what sleep you could ha get. You'd be on uh all the weekend, day and night. It was uh not very safe practice, and that's all changed.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

Henry, at what point in that period in your life did you start thinking about a certain discipline that you would want to go down in particular?

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah, I remember very clearly. Um I'd always been interested in in the mind. I remember as a teenager I I read a book by Sigmund Freud called The Psychopsology Everyday Life. I love that book. And uh I tried to understand things psychologically and I I knew the brain was sort of the area that I wanted to be in. And it was when I was doing orthopedics term as a first-year junior resident, I realized surgery was never going to be for me. And so I thought I'd either do neurology or psychiatry. So I um to do neurology, you had to become a physician first. So there's the Royal Australian College of Physicians, or Royal Australasian College now, physicians, had a pretty um tough exams, had a low pass rate. So I decided to qualify as a physician, and I did that in my fourth year. So it was in April um in year four of since I graduated. Now, of course, there's credential is and people have to do a lot more training. So to get your physician's membership, which I did at about three and a half third years after graduation, now it's over five years, people have to do that. So I graduated as a physician, and then um I thought I'd I decided I wanted to do psychiatry, and it was uh complicated to become a psychiatrist. You had to join up with the New South Wales Mental Health Commission or Health Commission, and they required me to do a year in a rural hospital as my first year, which didn't appeal to me. And uh so uh I did a few months as a locum general practice practitioner while I was doing my college exams for the physicians, and then my wife and I we got married in my in my 1970, my first year as a junior resident, we got married and uh we went to England, that was my rural placement, and I got a job at um at the Middlesex Hospital in London, and I did my first year of psychiatry there, and then my father was unwell, and so after a year and a half, we came back to Australia. We spent the first six months doing what a lot of Australians do. We bought a cheap car, 100 pounds on the strand, we bought an old fiat, and we drove around Europe for uh for six months, and it was a fantastic time. And then I settled down and took this job as a psychiatry, senior house officer. And then because my father was getting was unwell, we came back to to Sydney, and I then started working at uh what was then Callum Park uh for a few months um in a special unit that did psychosurgery, uh which is now banned. And then um I went to Prince Henry Hospital to continue my psychiatry training. Uh Prince Henry, Prince of Wales Hospital, and then I completed that in nineteen seventy-seven.

SPEAKER_03 44:04

Now Henry, can I take you back to the UK? Um your experience here in Australia, then over in the UK in the areas that you were studying, was there any a difference between the approach they had in the UK versus what you had and had you been exposed to here in Australia?

SPEAKER_00 44:21

It was pretty similar, because all our tradition was based on what happened in the old country, uh this case, you know, England, the UK. Um and Australian doctors are really well trained and they they liked Australian doctors. And so it was it was good to get a job at the Middlesex. It was a very one of the top hospitals there. And because I had the physician training, I knew more about medicine than most of my psychiatric colleagues at that time. So it was but it was a very exciting place to be. Uh there were things in psychiatry that weren't happening here. There was behavior therapy, which is starting. There was a lot of uh emphasis on psychoanalytical therapy. Remember, I was interested in Freud, and so I became quite attracted to that. There were meetings everywhere you could go and learn more things. And then the art scene in London was so vibrant. We could get cheap tickets, go to the theatre, we could go to the art galleries, listen to music and and um for pretty little money. And we we were discovering discovering England, and we we bought an old um, we bought a mini minor, and we, you know, we drive all over England up to Scotland on weekends. And and it was uh quite an exciting time for us. The weather was miserable, uh, particularly in winter, and you know, catching the tube into Middlesex Hospital in on Mortimer Street, in Mortimer Street W1, uh, you'd be crammed in and uh be quite smelly at times. But it it was it it was finding myself and and learning more about me and really embarking on this new career.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

And so you're back in Australia you for completing your studies. At any point during that time, did you question you perhaps your thoughts about the direction you were taking, or were you stimulated and thinking that you could make a difference?

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Well, in the training, we we rotated every six months. So I would spend six months doing working in a general hospital looking at the psychiatric issues of people in the medical wards. It's called consultational aid in psychiatry, six months in child psychiatry. I would spend time in the acute wards where people who come in that were acutely psychotic or suicidal, um, sometimes violent. Um, so we got a quite a rich experience. Some of the consultants I worked for had different orientations to others. Some were very what they called uh organically, organic psychiatrists interested in drugs and ECT and the physical treatments. Other ones were more interested in the new psychological treatments. There was gestalt therapy, which was just happening, was the movement from the United States, which had migrated here. Others more interested in psychanalytical psychotherapy. And so we, you know, I did courses in family therapy, marital therapy, um, and I I got a pretty good all-round um education. I didn't have a particular uh area I was going to. I I I quite liked psychotherapy, and I was doing private psychotherapy once I graduated as a psychiatrist on the side and getting supervision in that. And I decided I would do a trial of psychotherapy but adapted for general practice. I I'd done those several months of general practice as a locum before we went to England, and um I could tell that in general practice psychological issues were ignored or overlooked, and there was lack of expertise in how to treat them. And I did my first research actually watching GPs uh interviewing patients, and uh, you know, I wrote that up. That was my first research, and also showing that they missed a lot of the psychological treatments. We we would uh survey the patients before they saw the doctor, and so we'd have a score on their psychological health, and we saw how many of them were actually detected by the GPs. And so I developed this model of counseling or psychotherapy, designed for GPs, half-hour sessions, eight half-hour sessions, uh over eight weeks. And I thought I would do a randomized control trial to see if that made a difference. So I did my psychiatry exams in 1977, and then I got a fellowship for a year to do research, and I started this project, which ended up taking three or five years, and ended up with a a doctorate, uh like a PhD, that was then called an MD. And uh my trial, unfortunately, didn't show any difference between my model of brief psychotherapy and treatment as usual, and that was at the end of my psychotherapy career. So, what what what happened then? Well, by this time, you know, I I'd been a consultant, I'd become a consultant myself, and the professor and head of our school of psychiatry had asked me to become the director of the psychiatric unit at Prince Henry Hospital. So I was the director and medical superintendent. Uh I was involved in a lot of medical legal issues as the medical superintendent um appearing before tribunals about patients who were involuntarily detained. And um I was I was really not sure where I was going. But there's a bit of background that's important here. So we skip this. So while I was in England, my father had been diagnosed just before we left as having Alzheimer's disease. He was 52. Um, and as I said, I came back because of his illness. And he died in 1979 at the age of 59. And after that, I thought, you know, there'd be nothing for my mother to support her. There was nothing known about dementia in those days. Very little known, I should say, and no one was really much interested in it. It was mainly an old person's illness. Alzheimer's was thought to be a rare disease occurring in younger people. And people hadn't connected but seen old dementia and Alzheimer's were actually the same thing. So in 1981 and two, I got a group of people together, and we actually had a public meeting and we set up then, which was called the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Society, big name, or AdArds was the acronym. And we had 500 people come along to that meeting, and we formed this society, AdArds New South Wales. And um it's now grown, it became Alzheimer's Australia, and then now it's called Dementia Australia. Uh now it's a huge organization. Uh I became uh the inaugural president of the New South Wales One, and then with other states we formed the National Association. I became president of that, second president of that. And in the same year, in 1984, uh we actually set up um an international organization. I was invited by people in America, and with four countries, we set up Alzheimer's Disease International. That now has over a hundred countries involved, and it works with the World Health Organization. And I'm I became chairman of that at times, and then I uh I'm still honorary vice president of that. So, in the background, not part of my job, I was doing all this work with dementia, uh, in general, Alzheimer's disease in particular, and I just I decided, but at the same time, in my job, we had a new professor who became head of school, and his particular interest was in depression. And so that was Professor Gordon Parker, and under his leadership, we set up this mood disorders unit at the Prince Henry Hospital. So in 1984, I went to the States, I did a sabbatical at the Mass General Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard University, mainly to look at depression, but also I started going to memory clinics at the Mass General. And when I came back to Australia at the end of 84, beginning of 85, we set up a mood disorders unit, but I also set up one of the first memory clinics in Australia. So through the 80s, I was pretty, I mean, my kids were growing up, I was very involved with them. We have two children, and then um I uh I started doing some research into dementia, uh, ran a carers training program which uh was very successful and was emulated internationally, got published in the British Medical Journal. Um I was seeing more patients with dementia as well as acute psychiatric issues that were occurring as my role of superintendent. And then um in uh about 1990, uh the government decided to sell Strickland House. Now, Strickland House is a magnificent mansion on the harbor in Vaucluse, prime real estate, and they wanted to use that real estate for something other purposes or making money. Um so they decided it had been working as a nursing home. The people living there had been about a hundred residents with uh mainly with dementia, and I had been seeing many of them. So when they closed that down, they decided to set up a chair in psychogeriatrics, uh which I was successful with in 1990. So in 1990, I became a professor of uh old-age psychiatry or psychogeriatrics. Now I call myself professor of aging and mental health. And I've been in that position now since. So it's uh where are we now? 36 years. Uh, and it's been fantastic. So my initial thing was at this mood disorders unit, and we wrote lots of papers about classification of depression, treatment of depression, diagnosis of different types of depression. And then I moved into depression in late life, which is somewhat different to depression in earlier life, and also started doing more work in uh late onset schizophrenia, people developing schizophrenia in late life, uh, the the consequences of stroke on people's cognition, and also more research on dementia. So that's proceeded uh and continued uh until today.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

And Henry, have you seen a difference? Let's look at this at b uh at two different perspectives. Has the medical side of dementia and of mood issues changed over the period of time and your approach to managing and addressing it?

SPEAKER_00 54:46

Well, I think depression, we have new drugs for depression, um, which you know may help some. Well, for example, the old drugs often had quite significant side effects, but the newer drugs, the serotonin receptor, so so selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, the SSRIs, such as uh Prozac was the first one, and then uh Cypromil, and uh there's plenty of others, uh, they changed because it was much easier to prescribe them. GPs could prescribe them, and often overprescribe them too. It was easy for people to get drugs for depression rather than getting talking treatments. Uh then cognitive behavior therapy became available, and that changed life as well because previously psychotherapy was prolonged and took many sessions. Cognitive behavior therapy was a defined group of a number of sessions. So depression treatments have changed, and also our diagnosis has improved. With dementia, there's been a huge change here. Huge. So from being ignored, it's now become recognized. It's the leading cause of death in Australia, it's the leading cause of disease burden in Australia. It's um it cost our country over $18 billion a year. There was almost half a million people with dementia in Australia. And so I've been very interested in many aspects of dementia. Most recently, we did a large prevention trial, which was the most successful yet published in the world. And uh we are now got funding as of this year to roll this out. There's an online lifestyle prevention program called Maintain Your Brain, uh, that we're starting to roll out from next year. So we're gearing up from September this year to roll that out. So um with dementia, we have physics, has been our friend here. With physics, we've got all these imaging techniques now. We can look at brains just not with CT scans, but with MRI scans, with PET scans, and now with pet amyloid imaging, we can actually image the toxic proteins that build up in the brain of Alzheimer's. We have the first drugs approved as of last year for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. They're not cures, but they actually do slow down the rate of progression of pathology. So, yes, I've seen major changes in depression, but particularly in dementia. Uh, huge changes.

SPEAKER_03 57:08

Well, Henry, what about public? You know, you you'll find the medical side, your professional side will will look at disease and look at symptoms and look at possible uh outcomes to that and ways to to help the individual. But what about society? Does society see now the issues that you're dealing with in a different light? Or you know, a lot of people just hide things under the blanket, they just don't want to know about it. Does that change?

SPEAKER_00 57:34

No, you you're you're 100% right. People don't want to know about it, and even people with the disease don't want to know about it. There's a huge stigma to having mental illness, but particularly having dementia, and that's something you want to overcome. My goal as senior Strangie of the Year, 2026, is to develop a national brain health promotion program. We've been very good at prevention in Australia. Think skin cancer, think uh HIV, think cigarette smoking reduction, human papillomavirus, we've done lots of good things. We now need to embrace brain health as our prevention program. We know that with lifestyle changes, we can eliminate almost 50% of the risk of dementia. Or at least delay the onset of dementia. And if we can delay it for every year we can delay it, there'll be 10% fewer cases. So if we can delay it till after we die, that would be perfect. And so our prevention program, as I said, which was lifestyle, physical activity, nutrition, brain training, depression, anxiety treatment. We designed that a decade ago. We published the results last year and we showed it was cost-effective. We now want to expand that. And so at a societal level, we know there are social determinants of health and aging and dementia. And so things like looking after our blood pressure, looking after making sure we have enough physical exercise, we're socially connected, these are all things that can reduce the risk of dementia. And so we need to think at a societal level, not just in a medical model to attack this.

SPEAKER_03 59:11

And Henry, if you were mentoring young medical students now, and and and they're looking at entering into your your area of scientific research and medical discipline, what sort of advice would you give them on their journey to get to where you are now?

SPEAKER_00 59:32

I think being open to new ideas, um, looking where opportunities are as well. This was happenstance for me that I ended up in this area. My my father's gift to me was to wreck me into this area, which I didn't realize at the time. But with a rapidly aging society, see, we have now something like 17% of our population aged over 65. Uh, by the time my kids are 65, it'll be more like 20, 22 percent. And in some countries it's already 25%. So any branch of medicine that involves older people is going to be a gross area. But it's what what excites you that's important, not just what's opportunistic, what excites you and what you what you really like to do. Some people love doing research, some people like the clinical side of things where you talk to people, get to know them, some people like the policy side of things, um, and uh some people like the academic side of things. So I like them all, and that's why I love the field I'm in, because I get to do all of those things. I'm seeing patients, I'm uh I I work on a number of Commonwealth and State Committees and for the WHO as well. Um, I get to meet politicians and talk about policy, particularly this year as senior Australian. So it's it it combines all of those things and uh it provides stimulation. I love the complexity of old age psychiatry because it's not just the medical model. Because older people like me have more medical problems. You have the psychiatric issues, you have the social issues, and uh all of those come together. And you have to work with the family, not just with the patient. So if you like things that are straightforward, um not complicated, probably not the area for you as a doctor. If you like to have quick solutions or very definite things, like surgery to repair a broken bone, for example, is fairly straightforward. Of course, there can be complications with that. But um it it's different strokes for different folk.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

And finally, Henry, reflecting back on your father and his interest in you wanting to be in the medical field, what do you think he would have thought about the place that you've landed and the discipline that you've landed in now?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

Well, when they told him I was going to do psychiatry, he said, Don't do psychiatry, Henry. All psychiatrists are crazy or become crazy. Um but I I'm sure he would have been, and my mother would have been extremely proud of me. And particularly being, you know, as refugees into this country, very topical issue right now, um, to become an Australian of the year, you know, senior Australian, but any Australian of the year, is such an honour. And they would have been over the mood with that. And uh I'm sorry they're not alive to have seen that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:33

And on that note, Henry, would you like to introduce your last track? Who is the performer? And why did you select it?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

Uh well, the performer is Andrea Picelli and it's Beza Mamucia. Now, the reason I chose it is my father loved to sing it. He had a quite a good voice. I didn't get I didn't get his voice. Oh, I don't. And he loved to sing it. Whenever I hear the song, I think of him. Uh, which is why I chose that, really to honour him and and my mother, who was his main carer.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:05

In the note, so thank you for being a guest on the concept with Michael J.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:10

Thanks, Michael.