Dr Joel Cullin is an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker (AMHSW), Individual, Couple & Family Therapist, and respected expert in therapeutic practice and systemic thinking. Joel established Brisbane Family Therapy Clinic (BFTC) in 2005 after working for several years in public Adult Mental Health, Child and Youth Mental Health, not-for profit family therapy and support services, and child protection (in the UK). An extremely experienced practitioner and educator, Joel has conducted an average of 1500 therapy appointments each year over the past twenty years.
Alongside his private practice, Joel has been a lecturer in Social Work at the University of Queensland (UQ), teaching Professional Practice in Mental Health at both master’s and undergraduate levels. Joel is presently an adjunct lecturer at UQ. Joel has also designed and taught courses in Family Therapy at UQ and at James Cook University, and Human Development and child protection practice and theory at UQ. Joel is a contributor to the professional literature in the fields of family therapy, psychotherapy, systemic thinking, and social work, a Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy (HEA), and a Clinical Member of the Australian Association of Family Therapy (AAFT).
Joel’s Master’s dissertation (2005) and PhD thesis (2010) were both concerned with systemic thinking about complex problems. Systemic/cybernetic thinking and practice remains a key area of Joel’s professional expertise.
Joel provides clinical therapy supervision to psychologists, social workers, and other mental health professionals, and has been a regular provider of private training over the past two decades, often by invitation from organisations. In addition to university teaching, he has provided over fifty private workshops, seminars, and other training events on therapy practice.
First and foremost, Joel is a therapist/practitioner. He has accumulated well over twenty-thousand hours of actual in-the-room therapy with individual, couples, and families, helping them find solutions to complex problems. He continues to see clients four days a week in his rooms in Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill, where he has practiced since 2004.
