Dr Imogene Smith

DPsych(Clinical) BPsych(Hons)

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  • Unit Coordinator
  • Research Supervisor
  • Lecturer
  • Psychologist
Imogene Smith

Research Expertise

  • Childlessness
  • Men’s mental health in the transition to fatherhood and father-infant bonding
  • Mental health impacts of unplanned parenthood
  • Maternal mental health and mother-infant bonding
  • Parental burnout

Research Supervision

Imogene provides supervision to researchers in Cairnmillar’s masters-level programs.

Teaching

  • CLP601 Clinical Psychology: Theory and Practice (Unit Coordinator)
  • CLP603 Psychopathology and Intervention for Children and Youth

Clinical Expertise

  • Antenatal/Postnatal Mental Health
  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Worry and stress
  • Depression/Bipolar Disorder
  • Trauma
  • Grief and loss
  • Eating Disorders/Disordered eating/body image concerns

About

Imogene is a unit coordinator and lecturer within the Master of Clinical Psychology (post-registration) course. In addition to her academic role, she practices as a Clinical Psychologist at the Cairnmillar Clinic, where she applies her expertise in therapeutic intervention and psychological assessment.

Her research portfolio includes qualitative explorations of both fathers and men who choose to be childfree. Imogene’s research experience also includes advanced statistical and methodological work involving both cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Notably, she has also employed machine learning techniques to analyse large-scale data sets from platforms like Reddit, contributing innovative insights to the field.

Imogene has been invited to present her research findings at numerous prestigious national and international conferences. She has authored multiple peer-reviewed journal articles and serves as a peer reviewer for several leading psychological journals.

Imogene’s research has attracted significant media attention, with appearances on television and radio over recent years. Currently, Imogene’s research is centered on self-compassion and wellbeing among post graduate psychology students. This research as involved cross-institutional collaboration with interstate colleagues. Imogene is developing an exciting new program of research examining role of self-compassion in parenting.

Imogene has supervised honours and masters students to completion through The Cairnmillar Institute and Deakin University.

Key Publications

Smith, I., O’Dea, G., Demmer, D.H., Youssef, G., Craigie, G., Francis, L., Coles, L., D’Souza, L., Cain, K., Knight, T., Olsson, C., & Macdonald, J. A. (2023). Associations between Unintended Fatherhood and Paternal Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders. 339, 22-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.06.065

O’Dea, G., Youssef, G., Hagg, L.J., Francis, L.M., Spry, E.A., Rossen, L., Smith, I., Teague, S., Mansour, K.M., Booth, A., Davies, S., Hutchinson, D., Macdonald, J.A., (2023). Associations Between Maternal Psychological Distress and Mother-Infant Bonding: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Archives of Women’s Mental Health. 26, 441–452. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-023-01332-1

Smith, I., Youssef, G., Shatte, A., Teague. S., Knight, T. & Macdonald, J. A. (2022).  “You are not alone”: A big data and qualitative analysis of men’s unintended fatherhood. SSM-Qualitative Research in Health, 2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2022.100085

Macdonald, J.A., Mansour, K.A, Wynter, K., Francis, L., Rogers, A., Angeles, M.R., Pennell, M., Biden, E., Harrison, T., & Smith, I. Men’s and Boys’ Barriers to Health System Access. Literature Review Methods and Data Extraction (2021). Prepared for the Australian Government Department of Health, Canberra. https://osf.io/ywxuf/

Smith, I., Knight, T., Macdonald, J.A., & Fletcher, R. (2020). When men choose to be childless: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Journal of Personal and Social Relationships.37 (1), 325-344. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407519864444