Professor Anne Buist

Professor Anne Buist AO is the Chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and currently holds an honorary position at Austin Health, where she worked for nearly thirty years.

In 2026, Professor Buist was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for her work in perinatal psychiatry and education, and for promoting mental health awareness.

She has more than 35 years of clinical and research experience in perinatal psychiatry, which she has promoted among general practitioners, nurses, medical registrars and the wider community. She directed mother-and-baby units for much of this time and, more recently, oversaw an outreach team focused on strengthening attachment and improving long-term outcomes for mothers and their children.

During the past year, Professor Buist has worked in acute psychiatry in Queensland and provided clinical cover for a Victorian mother-and-baby inpatient unit.

Professor Buist was Director of the beyondblue Postnatal Depression Initiative, which led to Australia-wide screening for perinatal depression and anxiety.

She has been an investigator on perinatal research projects that received more than seven million dollars in funding and has authored over one hundred journal articles.

Her research has included childhood abuse as a risk factor for perinatal depression, which was the subject of her Doctor of Medicine thesis, as well as medication excretion into breastmilk, childbirth trauma and fear, and online psychological treatments.

For the past thirty years, Professor Buist has also worked with Protective Services and in the forensic and medicolegal aspects of perinatal psychiatry.

She served as a member of the Victorian Medical Panel from 2019 to 2024.