Indigenous Psychological Services

Dr Tracy Westerman, Managing Director of Indigenous Psychological Services (IPS) and is of the Nyamal people near Port Hedland, WA. She founded IPS in 1998 to address the inequity between the high rates of mental ill health amongst Aboriginal people and low rates of access to quality services.

Dr Westerman has a Post Graduate Diploma (Science, UWA) in Psychology, a Masters Degree (Clinical Psychology, Curtin University) and a Doctor of Philosophy (Clinical Psychology).

She is a recognised leader in Aboriginal mental health having won numerous awards including the NAIDOC National Scholar of the Year (2002); the Vice Chancellors Award for the top 10% of PhD’s submitted (2003); the National Health & Medical Research Council Post Doctoral Fellowship to investigate ADHD in Aboriginal people (2004; the only Aboriginal person to be awarded such a fellowship) and the Suicide Prevention Australia Award for Emerging Researcher (2006). She has been recognised in the “Who's Who of Australian Women” and “Who’s Who of the Worlds Women” from 2007 and won the WA Business News Strategic Alliance Award recognizing her as one of the foremost business leaders under 40 in WA.

Dr Westerman is widely sought after as a keynote speaker in Australia averaging six addresses per year, having presented thirty one invited keynote addresses to date. She has also been an invited international keynote speaker on FIVE separate occasions in Canada (2003); the USA (2004), Auckland, New Zealand (2006 & 2007) and Wellington (2009).

In 2005 the Canadian government sent a delegation to Australia to explore Dr Westerman’s innovative approaches resulting in recommendations that the same approach be adopted for Canadian Aboriginal people. The report can be downloaded here. Dr Westerman has worked on numerous state and federal tenders, research grants and community based interventions placing her at the forefront of understanding frameworks, policies, procedures and service delivery models that have demonstrated effectiveness with Aboriginal people.

Her PhD provided a much needed evidence base regarding the cultural manifestations of mental illness for Aboriginal people and the development of psychometric tests and assessment protocols which represent world ‘firsts’ for Indigenous people’s worldwide (Canadian Health, 2009). Dr Westerman’s training workshops attract an average of 800 people throughout Australia each year placing her at the forefront of Indigenous workforce development Australia wide.

Dr Westerman’s keynote presentation in Wellington New Zealand. Click here to view video interview.