Dr Bernadette Bywater founded and has been director of Centre Point Psychology since 2008. At Centre Point Psychology, Dr Bywater leads and supports a team of highly qualified and experienced psychologists, that have developed a reputation with referrers and clients for quality mental health treatment and strong values in client care. The practice has a number of areas of strength including the treatment of trauma, eating disorders and the mental health impact of physical health conditions. Bernadette has previously held positions in private hospital eating disorder inpatient and day patient programs, community and government settings in Australia and the UK and as a consultant psychologist to various bariatric clinics.
Dr Bywater is passionate about the entitlement of clients to receive mental health care that is innovative and evidence-based and she has dedicated herself to developing skills in a range of therapies including Eye-Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Somatically-informed therapy, Neuro-psychotherapy and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Dr Bywater has completed additional trainings in Medicine Assisted Therapy.
In addition to her work with general adult mental health, Dr Bywater is a certified psychedelic assisted therapy provider (Integrative Psychiatry Institute) and credentialed eating disorder clinician and she enjoys supporting other therapists at various stages of their career through clinical supervision and as a NSW Psychology Board of Australia, Board Approved Supervisor. She is dedicated to developing mental health services that are value driven and supportive of clinicians so that they can focus on using their talents and skills with clients.
Dr Bywater has a warm, caring and non-judgemental approach and believes in working collaboratively with clients so that they are actively involved in the direction of their therapy. Dr Bywater values learning from the life experience and strengths of each person she works with to individually tailor their treatment program to meet their therapeutic goals. She encourages the understanding the mental health symptoms in the context of the life experiences a person has had and supports the ability of each individual to define their own recovery and to determine the pathway towards it.
Dr Bywater is committed to ongoing training and clinical supervision in all areas of her work. For medicine enhanced therapy, she has completed a number of trainings including a year long course from the Integrative Psychiatry Institute in the US. She also has supervision from a number of international practitioners in the field including Clinical Psychologist Jeanine Souren, founder of the Experiential Training Institute in The Netherlands.