Matthew is currently not available to take on new clients
Bio
Dr Matthew McKenzie is the Senior Clinical Psychologist and Clinic Supervisor at Drop of Life Psychology and Wellness Centre.
He is endorsed by the Psychology Board of Australia in the area of clinical psychology and is a board-approved supervisor for provisional psychologists and clinical registrars. Matthew is also a registered clinical psychologist with Jamaica's Council of Professions Allied to Medicine. He is a Lecturer in Psychology/Clinical Psychology in the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University, teaching and providing clinical and research supervision in the undergraduate and postgraduate psychology programs. Matthew is currently the chair for the Gold Coast Branch of the Australian Psychological Society and additionally coordinates continuing professional development experiences for psychologists across the Gold Coast. He has also served previously for 6 years as the director of membership on the executive board of the Jamaican Psychological Society.
Matthew holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Griffith University, and a Masters in Clinical Psychology and Bachelors in Psychology and Criminology from The University of the West Indies. Matthew has 14+ years of clinical experience as a psychologist working across diverse settings, including: community group home facilities for individuals with severe mental health disorders, university health centres, private practice, a NGO dedicated to HIV prevention and management, clinical research trials exploring innovations in the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Phobias and dual diagnosis support programs for individuals challenged by addiction. He works with children, adolescents and adults with his areas of clinical focus being: Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, Depressive Disorders, Trauma, Stressor and Attachment-Related Disorders. He works predominantly from an attachment-based framework and has extensive experience with emotion-focused cognitive-behavioural therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy. Matthew is also currently undergoing accredited core training in Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), which is an accelerated form of psychodynamic psychotherapy designed to provide rapid access to the unconscious. The therapy's primary goal is to help clients overcome internal resistance to experiencing emotions related to present and past experiences. These emotions may have been warded off because they are either too frightening or too painful. The technique is intensive and short-term in that it aims to help clients experience these feelings to the maximum degree possible, as quickly as possible.
Matthew is a published author with several published book chapters and empirical papers in peer-reviewed academic journals. He sits on the editorial board for the journal Child Psychiatry and Human Development and is a regular reviewer for several high-ranking academic journals. His current core areas of research interest explore the relationship between emotion regulation and various forms of psychopathology in children and adolescents, it's role in Parenting practices and more generally research relating to the course and treatment of anxiety disorders and OCD in youth.
