EK Wills

As a psychiatrist, I spend my days working with people whose mental health is suffering. I prescribe medication. I refer for therapy. I think carefully about risk. That's the work, and I believe in it. But for years, I've also been quietly fascinated by something else: the growing body of evidence for wellbeing interventions that sit outside the clinic — in nature, in water, in heat and breath — and what they might offer alongside conventional care. The research has been accumulating for...

A Preview of Groundbreaking Work Being Presented at a National Psychiatry Congress This May When I returned to university as a mature-age student to study medicine, I had three children under ten and a daily commute from Sydney to Wollongong. On clinical placement, a supervisor told me he wouldn't have selected me — insufficient return on investment, he said, given my age, gender, and role as a mother. By the end of the placement, he conceded I had done three times the work of the other...

When Doing Good for Patients Means Doing Battle with Bureaucracy by The MotherMind Doctor I've been a psychiatrist long enough to know that healing doesn't always happen in a consulting room. It can happen on a forest trail. It can happen in a number of different environments like wellness activities such as sauna, spa, or simply through learning to breathe differently. These aren't fringe ideas. They're evidence-based interventions with a growing body of scientific literature behind them,...