Careers in mental health – interview with Registered Psychologist Jo Ogden

My name's Jo. I love my dog. I love my family. I love cooking, and I am a Registered Psychologist.

In year 11 and 12, I did Psychology and Sociology is like electives. And I kind of just thought, I'll go into that at university, and I'll see where it takes me. But the more I learn about it and the more I learn how strong our mind is and how much of a difference that you can make by giving people space to talk and giving people a space to know that they’re understood, then I think my passion for it really went through the roof.

I studied for my degree in Canberra at University of Canberra. I did a Bachelor of Science, which is three years I did an honours year, and then I did a two-year Clinical Masters in Psychology.

My advice for someone who wants to get into this field would be to get into the community and really expose yourself to what working in this profession kind of looks like and whatever role you can find.

I think talking to people and who are in this profession, we are the most passionate people about talking about psychology. So, if you can get your hands on one of us for a chat, we'll always have that conversation about what it's like.

I think mental health is extremely important. I think it would be hard to find someone who doesn't know someone who is affected by it. Everyone deserves the right to access it. And I think the more people we have in the field, the more access there is for people who need it.

It's probably not talked about enough how rewarding it is, and I think I never leave a day feeling like I haven't done something to help someone. And I think in a lot of jobs you might not get that. But knowing every day that I've helped a kid figure out what their big feelings are, or I've made someone feel a seven out of ten on their anxiety scale instead of a ten out of ten. That is a really special feeling.

It can change the course of people's lives, especially when you work with kids because you get to kind of build them up for the future, which I think is really special.