Sidney Bloch

MB ChB PhD DPM FRCPsych FRANZCP DipPhilMed; Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry and Centre for the Study of Health and Society, University of Melbourne, Australia

Sidney Bloch graduated in Medicine from the University of Cape Town and then proceeded to train in psychiatry in the University of Melbourne, where he gained a Diploma in Psychological Medicine and a PhD in Medical Psychology. He also has a Diploma in the Philosophy of Medicine. Further training took place at the Maudsley Hospital, and Stanford University, California holding a Harkness Fellowship. Thereafter, he worked for 13 years in the Department of Psychiatry, Oxford University. In 1989 he took up the appointment of Associate Professor and Reader at the University of Melbourne. He was promoted to full professor in 1999. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the University’s Centre for Health and Society.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and of the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. He was a member of the Ethics Committee, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, 1989-2002; and served on the Royal College of Psychiatrist’s Committee on Psychiatric Abuse from 1978-1988.

He was Editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry for 13 years (1992 until 2004); he was associate Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry from 1978 until 1988.

He has published 12 books several of which have been translated (Japanese, Spanish, Hindi, Russian, Italian, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Turkish, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Hewbrew): Russia’s Political Hospitals (1977), which won the Manfred Guttmacher Award of the American Psychiatric Association in 1978 for the best book published in forensic psychiatry; Soviet Psychiatric Abuse (1984); An Introduction to the Psychotherapies – 3rd Edition (1996); What is Psychotherapy? (1982); Psychiatric Ethics – 3rd Edition (1999); Therapeutic Factors in Group Psychotherapy (1985); Foundations of Clinical Psychiatry – 2nd Edition (2001); The Family in Clinical Psychiatry (1994); Codes of Ethics and the Professions (1996); Understanding Troubled Minds (1997); Family Caregivers: Disability, Illness and Ageing (1988); and Family-focused Grief Therapy (2002). An anthology of psychiatric ethics and a new edition of An Introduction to the Psychotherapies are in press. He has published 170 articles and chapters, chiefly in the areas of psychotherapy, psycho-oncology and psychiatric ethics. His research interests are in psycho-oncology (NHMRC and other funded projects on application of psychological therapies for women with early and late stage breast cancer, and for families facing the loss of a parent from cancer, and on the experience of having prostate cancer); and ethics (resource allocation, theoretical framework, history of psychiatric ethics).

His contribution to scientific publishing and to promoting writing by newly graduating psychiatrists was recognized in the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists awarding him the “College Citation” in 2005.

Competing Interests/Conflicts of Interest: None to declare in the past year.