Rate My Professor Pamela Patrick

Dr. Pamela Patrick is a Lecturer in the School of Educational Psychology and Counselling within the Faculty of Education at Monash University, where she also serves as a Board-Approved supervisor. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy in 2020, focusing on the intergenerational parenting practices, experiences, and service needs of adult children of parents with mental illness, receiving the Mollie Holman Medal for the Best Doctoral Thesis in the Faculty of Education. Patrick holds a Master of Educational and Developmental Psychology. After completing her doctorate, she worked as a school psychologist, supporting adolescents and school communities with mental health concerns including anxiety management, school avoidance, eating disorders, and self-harm behaviors. She is a member of the Australian Psychological Society and a Fellow of the APS College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists. Patrick contributes as a peer reviewer for Advances in Mental Health and Frontiers in Psychology. Her career at Monash University spans from 2015, and she has been recognized with the 2024 EPC Excellence in Teaching award and the MEA Education Excellence award in 2025.

Patrick's research interests center on families where a parent has a mental illness, experiences of adult children of parents with mental illness, educator wellbeing and professional satisfaction, burnout and compassion fatigue, and enhancing educator competencies to support LGBTQIA+ students in schools. Her expertise includes cultivating inclusive school communities, advancing teacher and student wellbeing, supporting underrepresented groups in education, and employing the Delphi technique in mixed-methods studies and participatory action research. Key publications include 'Coping in the classroom: a study of Professional Quality of Life (ProQoL) in Australian teachers' (2025, Australian Journal of Education, with Elizabeth Bensley); 'Artificial intelligence and higher-order thinking: a systematic review of educator and student experiences and perspectives in higher education' (2025, Higher Education Quarterly, with Sun Yee Yip and Chris Campbell); 'Teachers' sense of belonging in school: a scoping review' (2025, with Jessica Wator and Sun Yee Yip); and contributions to systematic reviews on cultural and racial awareness in mental health practitioners. She presented her PhD findings at the 'It Takes a Village' international conference in Oslo in 2019.