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Paul Rushton

Paul Rushton is a Clinical Psychologist with over 30 years of experience helping people with a range of problems, particularly anxiety presentations of all types, and acute trauma. He has worked with emergency first responders for over 20 years.

Paul is the Principal Psychologist of PRA Psychology. He has held adjunct academic appointments as a Clinical Assistant Professor at Bond University, Lecturer at Griffith University, and Sessional Lecturer with the Medical School at the University of Queensland. He worked in Queensland Health mental health services for over a decade until 2003, and during that time held senior positions including Senior Clinical Psychologist and Manager of the Gold Coast Mental Health Service with over 200 staff. He has extensive experience in a range of areas including clinical psychology, government mental health services, performance coaching and employee assistance.

Areas of Interest and Experience

  • Anxiety disorders of all types including OCD and PTSD
  • Worry and obsessions
  • Performance anxiety
  • Trauma
  • Depression
  • Relationship problems (including individual and couple therapy)
  • Grief and loss
  • Adjustment to injury counselling
  • Workplace stress
  • Perfectionism
  • Anger management
  • Personal growth including assertiveness training and improving self-esteem
  • Cognitive-behavioural therapy
  • EMDR
  • Interpersonal Psychotherapy
  • Mindfulness
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
  • Schema Therapy
  • Brief Psychodynamic Therapy
  • Mid to long-term Psychotherapy
  • Emotion-based therapy
  • Performance Coaching

Paul has a passion for helping people improve their lives. He has significant expertise helping people understand themselves better and what stops them achieving their goals, and having the relationship they want. Paul provides performance coaching for clients wanting to improve their lives in specific areas such as their business or sporting performance. He has provided consultancy for sporting organisations and other mid-size organisations over many years. He has extensive experience with emergency services personnel including police, fire and ambulance employees.

Due to his years of experience he is adept at meeting the goals of clients ranging from those wanting sessions to ‘offload’ and process thoughts and feelings, to learning strategies and skills, to changing unhelpful thinking and emotional patterns, to achieving a deeper-level understanding of themselves, to resolving chronic and complex problems.

In the past Paul has regularly provided training workshops across Australia and overseas including training staff within the Singapore Government in Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) and Mindfulness. He is a certified Trainer and Supervisor in Interpersonal Psychotherapy with the International Society of IPT.