Chris Tennant
Professional life
I entered Faculty of Medicine Sydney Uni 1962. As a medical student I was on the SRC for a number of years and lead an NUAUS student group to China during the cultural revolution, returning a fully fledged red guard, complete with uniform.
The red guard uniform may have saved my life. I was "conscripted" (and have detested the Liberal party every since). I managed to fail my conscription medical by wearing my red guard uniform to the medical examination. The Army doctor I fear thought I was a fruit loop.
I graduated from university in 1968 and while doing country medical rotations was "fortunate" enough to work part-time for the Army doing conscription medicals.Not surprising very few of the examinees managed to be fit enough to meet the Army's "very high standard" of health requirements (doesn't the wheel turn).
I had no idea what to do really post graduation so as a "filler" I did a Masters degree in Public Health at Harvard university. Following this I was still relatively clueless and moved to London in the still swinging 70's and completed psychiatry training there to pass the time.
I returned to the University of New South Wales still not knowing what to do with my life, so enrolled in an MD and completed that in the area of stress and illness. Still not knowing what to do with my life, I became an academic at Sydney University and have progressed to now being a professor of Psychiatry. My clinical interests are in the area of depression and marital therapy and research has focused on the links between stress and illness, in particular heart disease, cancer, and psychiatric disorders.
I have been extensively involved with the National Heath Medical Research Council and the College of Psychiatrists. In the latter I have been on the examinations committee, the "Manpower" committee and most recently the Ethics committee (doctors having sex with patients is a matter of some interest at the moment!). Within the Faculty of Medicine I chaired the Student Welfare committee (the students mental health) and also the Personal and Professional Practice committee (which is essentially the teaching of medical ethics).
Personal life
I married Beth in mid 70's and had two lovely children, Laura currently doing the HSC and Andrew doing law at Macquarie Uni. My family was devastated by my wife's rapid death from breast cancer in 1992. After a year of misery, life and eventually love returned; through friends I met Katherine, herself a widower with 2 boys. She is a magazine editor for ACP. With the usual hiccups, the merged family works remarkably well.
I currently live in Greenwich, the suburb in which I grew up and indeed 3 doors from my original family home. (Freud is alive and well).
I remain a probationary Prozac prescriber, and valiant vasectomized Viagra virgin. (The alliteration will hopefully provoke David Levine into a minor frenzy).