Benjamin Veness is a medical doctor (a child and adolescent psychiatrist) in Australia. Unusually for a doctor, Benjamin has a corporate background, having worked in the banking sector before changing careers.
In the year Benjamin represented 17,000 medical students as President of the Australian Medical Students’ Association, he took a break from clinical medicine, instead studying a Master of Public Health for which he was later awarded the Edmund Barton Medal from The University of Sydney. He was also twice-elected to the Senate of The University of Sydney, and produced his cohort’s revue (‘Cadavatar’), raising $43,000 for charity.
Benjamin enjoys writing and has been published extensively, with recent pieces in MJA Insight, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Sydney Alumni Magazine. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2013 to research the critically-important area of university students’ mental health, and since 2015 he has been an Australia Day Ambassador.
Benjamin now presents regularly on the topic of university students’ mental health at conferences and other events around Australia. He is also an advocate for doctors’ and medical students’ mental health, and during the COVID-19 pandemic has been campaigning for improvements in all healthcare workers’ occupational health and safety.
Benjamin Veness 