Rate My Professor Kate Scott

Professor Kate Scott is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Otago's Dunedin School of Medicine. She trained as a clinical psychologist at Victoria University, earning an MA in Applied Clinical Psychology, and was awarded a Rutherford Scholarship to complete her PhD in experimental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. Her professional career began as a clinician in adult mental health services in Wellington, followed by a postdoctoral role as a senior analyst in the Ministry of Health's national health surveys program. She joined the University of Otago as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Wellington School of Medicine, concurrently serving part-time as a Senior Clinical Psychologist in the Liaison Psychiatry Team at Wellington Hospital. In 2011, she was appointed Associate Professor and Head of Behavioural Science in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Dunedin School of Medicine, and promoted to Professor in 2015.

A senior investigator in the World Health Organization's World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys Initiative, Professor Scott has contributed to household epidemiologic surveys of mental disorders in over 30 countries. Her research focuses on psychiatric epidemiology, mental-physical comorbidity, health psychology, cross-national psychiatric epidemiology, the inter-relationship between mental and physical disorders, and gender differences in mental disorders. Funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the James Hume Bequest Fund, and the NZ Lotteries Board, her influential publications include "Trauma and PTSD in the WHO world mental health surveys" (2017), "Mental disorders among college students in the World Health Organization world mental health surveys" (2016), "The epidemiology of traumatic event exposure worldwide: results from the World Mental Health Survey Consortium" (2016), and recent WMH papers on treatment predictors and barriers (2025). She received the University of Otago Health Research Excellence Award for Research Publication in 2016 and delivered her Inaugural Professorial Lecture in 2015. Professor Scott has served on the University of Otago Human Ethics Committee (Health), as Executive Committee Member of the WHO WMH Surveys Initiative, and as Chair and Member of Health Research Council Science Assessing Committees, advancing global understanding of mental health epidemiology.