Paul Badcock

Paul Badcock is an Associate Professor in Youth Mental Health at the Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, and at Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health. He earned his PhD in Psychology from the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, and a Bachelor's Degree with Honours from the University of Melbourne. His academic career at the University of Melbourne began as a lecturer in 2014, and he has held positions including Program Director at Orygen since December 2015 and Course Coordinator for Higher Education from April 2014 to August 2017. Badcock serves as Principal Coordinator for the Master of Youth Mental Health and has coordinated subjects such as Management of Youth Mental Health.

Badcock's research specializations include theoretical psychology, evolutionary systems theory, active inference, youth mental health, mood and affective disorders, and cognitive neuroscience. He is affiliated with Karl J. Friston's Lab and contributes to understanding depression through evolutionary and computational perspectives. Key publications encompass 'The Social Risk Hypothesis of Depressed Mood: Evolutionary, Psychosocial, and Neurobiological Perspectives' (2003), 'Evolutionary Systems Theory: A Unifying Meta-Theory of Psychological Science' (2012), 'The Depressed Brain: An Evolutionary Systems Theory' (2017), 'Why Depressed Mood is Adaptive: A Numerical Proof of Principle for an Evolutionary Systems Theory of Depression' (2021), 'The Separation Distress Hypothesis: The Ultimate Theory of Depression?' (2023), 'Active Inference in Psychology and Psychiatry: Progress to Date?' (2024), and 'Disorder at the Synapse: How the Active Inference Framework Unifies Competing Perspectives on Depression' (2025). Additional works include contributions to studies on social relationships in depression treatment, predictors of suicidal ideation in youth with depression, and principles for designing mental health service environments. His scholarship advances evolutionary models of mood disorders and predictive coding in psychiatry.

Professional Email: pbadcock@unimelb.edu.au