Rita Younan - Jeffrey Young Schema Therapy Association

Rita Younan, DPsych

Vice President of Events and Symposia

Australia’s most experienced accredited group schema therapist, working at the intersection of complex trauma, attachment, and the careful integration of evidence-based modalities.

Rita Younan is a Clinical Psychologist whose career has been shaped by the cases that don’t fit neatly into a single framework. Across inpatient wards, outpatient clinics, and community settings, she has worked at the sharp end of complex PTSD, personality pathology, and attachment trauma, presentations that demand more than one toolkit. Schema Therapy anchors the work. EMDR, CBT, DBT, and somatic approaches extend it. More recently, qualification as a Psychedelic-Assisted Therapist has pushed the edges of what integrative care can hold.

Rita is Australia's most experienced accredited group schema therapist.

That distinction was earned in the room, not on a resume. Rita built and ran group schema therapy programs inside real clinical systems, including an intensive four-week inpatient program for complex trauma developed in direct collaboration with the founders of Group Schema Therapy, Professor Joan Farrell and Ida Shaw. As Founder and Clinical Director of the Schema Therapy Institute Australia, she now oversees both direct clinical services and the training of clinicians who carry the model forward into their own practices. Accreditation as an Advanced Schema Therapist, Supervisor, and Trainer through the ISST, combined with AHPRA endorsement as a supervisor, reflects the full depth of that investment.

Rita's clinical work runs alongside national-level program leadership.

Rita serves as Director of Allied Health for national programs at a leading private psychiatric hospital, a role focused on building psychological programs that are both evidence-based and built to scale without losing their integrity. To that platform she brings specialist qualifications that are genuinely unusual in combination: EMDR Consultant-in-Training status and certification as a qualified Psychedelic-Assisted Therapist. For patients whose presentations sit outside conventional treatment pathways, that breadth is not incidental. It is precisely the point.

From 2020 to 2024, Rita served on the Executive Board of the International Society of Schema Therapy as Training Coordinator.

The role put her at the centre of how the field trains itself globally. During her four-year term she shaped international training standards, produced a significant volume of events, workshops, and conferences, and helped orient the ISST toward the next generation of practitioners. That influence extends into the published record as well: her research in schema therapy, trauma, and attachment continues to reach clinicians well beyond the training room.

Rita Younan serves as Vice President of Events and Symposia for the Jeffrey Young Schema Therapy Association. The role is a natural extension of four years producing international events at the ISST level, and of a clinical career built on the conviction that rigorous, integrative work belongs in the rooms where it is most needed. The same precision she brings to complex trauma now shapes the gatherings where the schema therapy community comes together to push the field forward.