Dr Sarah Wells

Working with Trauma and Eating Disorders

I have been a clinical psychologist for almost 20 years now; and have until now; worked exclusively for the community mental health services. I’ve worked across the child and adolescent sector, and the adult mental health sector. I’ve worked with individuals, groups, parents, dyads (parent-child) and families.

I love this work; I love working as part of a multidisciplinary wrap around team, I love the diversity of opinions you get in these teams where you work with people from a range of professions. I particularly love the patients and their families I have had the privilege of treating individually over my career, and as part of my role on the family therapy team. I have been fortunate enough to develop significant expertise in an area of mental health I am very passionate about; the eating disorders. The community mental health service has generously upgraded my position to Senior Clinical Psychologist because of my specialist skills and knowledge in working with, training and supervising staff within the service in working with this patient group. Working with eating disorders, and working with people who have experienced severe trauma are two of the clinical populations I am most passionate about helping. And certainly my role in the community health services gives me a breadth of patients with both of these problems. Often, these diagnoses are co-morbid (that is you may receive a diagnosis of an eating disorder and a trauma related disorder), but almost as commonly, they can be separate struggles.

Right now, I have chosen to take a career break to take stock; take some time out to look after myself and my family and return to my work when I am ready to do so. But, in addition to this, I see an opening to do some private work at the conclusion of my career break. After hours therapy is hard to come by; and for many families and struggling students or individuals who need to come to see clinical psychologists for help business hours can only create a greater burden in accessing care. I’m also reaching a point in my career where I need to have some autonomy in my work. For now, I am working on expanding my skills until I am able to return to my position at the child and adolescent community mental health team, and then find capacity to commence some after hours private practice. I am thoroughly enjoying learning about a breadth of therapies this year; and can’t wait to begin incorporating them into the work I do with my patients when I finish my career break.