Ed Heffernan is Director of the Queensland Forensic Mental Health Service and Professor of Psychiatry at The University of Queensland. He has more than 25 years’ experience as a psychiatrist working with people experiencing mental illness and mental health crises who come into contact with the criminal justice system. He leads the Police Mental Health Liaison Service, an innovative acute mental health service that partners closely with police, including specialist negotiators, to provide frontline responses to individuals experiencing acute mental health problems. His work has focused on improving collaborative models between health and law enforcement services to better support vulnerable people in crisis.
Professor Heffernan also leads a research group at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and is Principal Investigator of the Partners in Prevention study, which examines first responses to suicide crises in Queensland. This program includes a globally unique linked-data study involving more than 70,000 individuals, 220,000 suicide-related emergency service calls, and over 20 million linked health records.His research and advisory work have examined the evidence base for police and mental health response models, particularly collaborative approaches to mental health crisis intervention. He is frequently consulted nationally by health services, and law enforcement agencies, and regularly provides expert advice and evidence in coronial inquests and major investigations relating to mental health crisis responses.