Let’s consider the known risk factors for involvement in youth crime – male gender, early maltreatment, being raised in a low socio-economic status community, chaotic and/or coercive parenting, learning and/or behaviour difficulties at school, school exclusion and early school...

Published Jun 2017

APS members strive to offer effective, high quality services to our clients and the communities we serve. As a consequence, we are obliged to regularly reflect on our own practice, and to identify ways in which we can further develop our competencies and improve the servic...

Published Jan 2018

The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has adopted several APS recommendations in its final report Safe, Informed, Supported: Reforming Justice Responses to Sexual Violence, marking a strong outcome from our policy and advocacy work, and highlighting the important role ps...

Last reviewed Apr 2025

For most people, sex is assigned at birth on the basis of genitalia. The majority of people assigned ‘female’ at birth will also experience their gender as ‘female’ in line with social norms about what constitutes this category. Similarly, most people who are assigned ‘male’ a...

Published Apr 2018

‘You cannot wipe the tears off another’s face without getting your own hands wet.’ - Zulu proverb As early as the late 1890s, Sigmund Freud reported his own suppression of feelings after his patient's suicide. For many years following, the suicide of a psychiatric patient w...

Published Jul 2019

People with disability represent a diverse population. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (The United Nations, 2006) defines persons with disabilities as having long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with var...

Published Jul 2017

Homeless people encounter multiple barriers to accessing services for their general health, housing, employment and psychosocial needs (Anderson, 1992). These barriers include long waiting times, inflexible scheduling, inadequate service options and complicated admission crite...

Published Apr 2019

Publication of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is a significant event in Australian psychology. While some psychologists may be ambivalent about DSM because of its biomedical connotations...

Published Jun 2017

Implications for psychologists’ collection, storage and disclosure of personal information Significant amendments to the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 that regulates the handling of personal information became operative on 12 March 2014. Although the impact of the amendment...

Published Jun 2017

The APS has updated the publication, Evidence-based Psychological Interventions in the Treatment of Mental Disorders: A Literature Review. The new edition reports on the latest research evidence for a range of psychological interventions in the treatment of mental health disor...

Published Sep 2018