Rate My Professor Anne Wand

Anne Wand is a Conjoint Associate Professor in the Specialty of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Concord Clinical School, at the University of Sydney. She holds the degrees B(Sc)Med(Hons), MBBS(Hons), MPsychiatry, and PhD, and is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (FRANZCP) with Certificates of Advanced Training in Psychiatry of Old Age and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. In her career, she serves as Research Director for the Mental Health Service and senior staff specialist psychiatrist in Older Persons’ Mental Health, Sydney Local Health District. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Discipline of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of New South Wales, where she teaches psychiatry of old age topics including depression, cognition, self-harm, and suicide in older adults. A/Prof Wand supervises higher degree research students and RANZCP psychiatry trainees on subjects such as intimate partner violence in older adults, psychiatric advance directives, psychogeriatric liaison services, and psychotropic medication use in community-dwelling older people with dementia.

A/Prof Wand specializes in old age psychiatry, with research interests in self-harm and suicide prevention in older adults, advance care planning for people with mental illness, hoarding and squalor, delirium, human rights, psychotropic prescribing in dementia, and mental health service evaluation including the Pathways to Community Living Initiative. Key publications include 'Suicide prevention in the context of ineligibility for voluntary assisted dying: emerging insights' (BMC Psychiatry, 2026), 'Evaluation of a novel educational intervention for mental health staff on advance care planning with older people with mental illness' (European Geriatric Medicine, 2026), 'Cognitive impairment in older people accessing public mental health services across Australia and New Zealand: Implications for clinical practice, workforce development and service provision' (Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 2025), and 'Mortality in people living with dementia who self-harmed: An Australian data linkage study' (Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 2024). She has secured grants such as the 2023 Moyira Elizabeth Vine Fund for advance care planning in schizophrenia and the 2021 NSW Ministry of Health grant for an Older Peoples Aftercare Service Delivery Model. In leadership, she chairs the NSW Faculty of Psychiatry of Old Age Subcommittee, RANZCP, and is Deputy Chair of the Australian Medical Council’s mental health writing group. She received the Dean’s Award for PhD thesis in Medicine, UNSW, 2020.