Experience:

Dr Curtis initially trained as a Registered General/Surgical Nurse in 1979 then studied Psychiatric Nursing in 1986 specialising in child/adolescent, adult acute hospital, liaison psychiatry, anxiety/depression and drug/alcohol co-morbidity, and behavioural medicine at various facilities located in Melbourne Victoria and Sydney NSW. 

In 1996, Dr Curtis changed careers and trained as both a specialist Clinical and Counselling Psychologist at a Doctoral and Clinical Post-Graduate level. Employing a meta-psychoanalytical epistemological framework, Dr Curtis's thesis investigated the role that psychological resilience plays in media exposure to terrorism using the Bali bombing (2002) as an exemplar.

Dr Curtis tutors both Abnormal Psychology and Personality units to APS-accredited undergraduate university programes as well as lectures Psychopharmacology to Doctoral/Masters postgraduate students and has a number of important research and clinical interests. These include: the phenomenology of psychotic depression, prodromal negative schizophrenia, medical psychology and behavioural medicine. She also have a strong clinical interest in delineating the endophentoype and phenotypes of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

She publishes in the areas of psychoanalysis and personality disorders in peer-reviewed academic journals (i.e., Psychoanalytic Review) and has been an invited reviewer for the Journal of Clinical Psychology and Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

Dr Curtis is also committed to two community projects in her spare time. The first is the advancement of Delta Pet Partners (trained volunteers and their Delta accredited pet dogs).Volunteers visit a very wide range of health and community facilities, including children's and adult hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, physical rehabilitation and mental health units, children with special needs and adult day care centres.

The second project is linked to The Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Melbourne, which co-ordinates a Body Donor Program for the purposes of anatomical examination and the teaching and study of anatomy. Bodies that have been donated to the are used in the education and training of future healthcare professionals including medical, dental, physiotherapy, science and nursing students and are also used for the advanced training of surgeons and other specialists.