Rate My Professor Warwick Brunton

Dr. Warwick Brunton served as Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at the University of Otago's Dunedin School of Medicine. He is recognized as a health historian whose work centers on the development of mental health policy and services in New Zealand. Brunton obtained his PhD from the University of Otago; his doctoral thesis, titled "A Choice of Difficulties: National Mental Health Policy in New Zealand, 1840-1947," analyzed the formation and challenges of national mental health strategies over that period.

From 1972 to 1996, Brunton occupied various management and policy-making positions in the Department of Health and Ministry of Health. He subsequently joined the University of Otago's Department of Preventive and Social Medicine as a Senior Teaching Fellow, later becoming Honorary Senior Lecturer, and retired in 2012. Brunton authored "The Medicine of the Future: A History of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago, 1886-2011," chronicling the department's evolution from its establishment in the university's pioneering phase to becoming one of the largest departments. His publications include "The Place of Public Inquiries in Shaping New Zealand's National Mental Health Policy, 1858-1996" (Australian and New Zealand Health Policy, 2005), "The Scottish Influence on New Zealand Psychiatry before World War II" (Immigrants & Minorities, 2011), and the book chapter "Grafting and Crafting New Zealand's Mental Health Policy" (2017). He also contributed the "Mental health services" entry to Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Brunton delivered seminars on topics including the origins of deinstitutionalization and the 1918 influenza pandemic in Dunedin.