Andrea is a Professor at Monash University, Clayton and Head of the Educational Psychology and Counselling School in the Faculty of Education.  In 2019 she was the co-recipient of the Tom Trauer Evaluation and Research award at the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Services Network and in 2016 was the winner of the British Medical Association President's prize for the edited book, Parental Psychiatric Disorder.  Andrea was the scientific chair for the It Takes a Village conference in Oslo, 2019 and in 2017, was an assigned mentor for the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft Research Institute.  

She is the Editor in Chief of the journal Advances in Mental Health, Associate Editor for Australian Psychologist, and has served as guest editor for the Medical Journal of Australia and Child & Youth Services Review for special issues related to families where a parent has a mental illness. 

Andrea’s area of expertise is in the area of families living with adversity, especially those where a parent has a mental illness.  Working in collaboration with parents and youth, Andrea has established an active program of research regarding evidence based interventions for families and professional development materials for clinicians.   Andrea has received funding from beyondblue, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (Vic, NSW and Qld), Department of Health (Vic, NSW and Qld) and the Australian Infant, Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Association.  Recent projects include the category one Mental Illness Research Fund ($1.85 million) for a randomized controlled trial titled Developing an Australian-first recovery model for parents in Victorian mental health and family services.  Another recent project, Family focused practice within a recovery framework, from the Partners in Recovery Initiative, aimed to conceptualise the place of families within the recovery journey for those with a mental illness.   

Andrea was one of the initiators of the Parental and Family Mental Health Worldwide collaborative, which meets every two years in Prato, Italy.  The collaborative brings together researchers from around the world to exponentially advance the parental mental health research agenda.  Her leadership in this collaborative has involved mentoring current and future research leaders in Australia, North  America,  Norway, Thailand, the Netherlands, the UK and Finland.  

Parental mental health and outcomes for children; Developing effective support structures and interventions for families living with adversity; Whole school approaches to social and emotional wellbeing  and classroom management programs