A FOCUS on kindness in healthcare is among the reasons why Bayside Health Peninsula’s Richard Newton was named a Member of the Order of Australia.
Newton has dedicated decades of work to psychiatry, focusing on mental health among people experiencing homelessness, and people with eating disorders. He is currently a consultant psychiatrist with the infant child and youth service at Bayside Health Peninsula.
Newton’s medical training began in Edinburgh, Scotland, before bringing him to the shores of Australia in 1992. He said “I was always going to do psychiatry, and I was all about working in areas fighting against discrimination.”
“Among psychiatry patients there were homeless people and people with eating disorders. So you have a stigmatised and discriminated-against population, and even within that there are two populations that are most discriminated against,” Newton said.
“After coming to Australia I helped set up statewide homelessness services, and when I became clinical director at Peninsula Health in 2004 I did work on community mental health redesigns.
“I later worked at the Austin as their medical director and set up an eating disorder program across the Austin and St Vincent’s, then I came back to the peninsula in 2017.”
Newton says that kindness-centred care is key to his approach. He takes great pride in is his work to reduce Peninsula Health’s seclusion rates; the healthcare organisation has now completely eliminated seclusion and mechanical restraints in its inpatient services.
“In 2004 at Peninsula we had the highest rate of seclusion in the state, when people would become agitated and placed in solitary confinement. We improved that by the time I left in 2009 and that continued after I left,” he said.
“People come to work to do a good job, but in psychiatry you come to work to do a kind job. Seclusion is not kind or safe.
“People once felt safer if patients were locked into seclusion rather than having them roam free in the ward. We had to identify that it was safer and kinder to not put people into seclusion, but to listen to them and understand their problems, and give them space and time to settle down. In a pressured environment creating that space and time is hard, but I can’t tell you how proud I am of that work.”
Newton has worked across Frankston and Rosebud during his time at Bayside Health Peninsula. Newton said that the work of his colleagues was to thank for his inclusion among the names on the King’s Birthday Honours List this year.
“It’s a huge deal, it’s very moving, it’s humbling,” Newton said.
“It’s groups of people involved with this work, it’s not individuals.”
First published in the Mornington News – 16 June 2026
