Gillian Nikakis

Gillian OAM is a registered nurse and a mental health nurse. She has also completed studies in midwifery, community health nursing and achieved a Bachelor of Advanced Nursing and Psychiatric Nursing. Before commencing her private practice, she was the Nursing Co-ordinator of a Community Health Centre and, prior to this, a nurse/therapist at The Melbourne Clinic.

Since 1989, a major part of her work has been with adult survivors of childhood abuse. She has been active in organisations committed to improving services to people who have been abused. She also supervises counsellors working with adult survivors and has run counselling units for midwives at Latrobe University.

In 1992, she co-founded of the Australian Association of Trauma and Dissociation.

She has been part of a world-first study into Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) with Dr Joseph Ciorciari at Swinburne University of Technology, and is the former convenor of the Child Trauma Collection of Art at the Dax Collection and is on the Acquisition Committee.

Gillian was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 2013 and is the author of two books and numerous collections of art.