Melanie Turner has always been "a bit of a talker".
And growing up in Adelaide, the Noongar woman also knew she wanted a career where she could help others.
At first she thought medicine, entering graduate medical school in her 20s, but after a clinical stint in Townsville, she was drawn to the practice of psychiatry.
"It was really understanding people and where they were from and how they were connected to each other and the impact of illness and the impact of addiction and impact of colonisation and separation," Dr Turner told AAP.
"I went with a couple of clinicians to Palm Island and some more of the rural and remote areas while I was in Queensland and just found it kind of sat in my soul."
Now South Australia's deputy chief psychiatrist and working part-time in her own practice as a child and adolescent specialist, Dr Turner's interests are increasingly on policy, legislation, advocacy and regulatory work.
Via a Churchill Fellowship research grant, she has investigated crisis care models worldwide, visiting the United States, UK, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Focusing on non-hospital options, Dr Turner says she hopes her work will help expand crisis care away from having to attend an emergency department.
"Different places in the world have different ways of offering that but they're all leaning towards a continuum of crisis care," she said.
"I think that would really help lower the number of people waiting in an emergency department who generally don't get what they need because they're not really built for people in mental health crisis.
"That's the vision that hopefully we can bring to Australia, that we have a continuum with a wider group of people offering different levels of intervention."
Dr Turner said psychiatry can be fulfilling and enjoyable but it's an industry where people must also look after themselves.
"Psychiatry is an amazing job to have to have and it is such a privilege to get to know people and work with people on a level that is so private and intimate and so brave of them," she said.
"It is also on the flip side a hard job, it's a lot of work and a lot of dedication to the practice of psychiatry."
Reflecting on her career, Dr Turner said she would not be where she is without the support of her peers and family.
"People who do roles like I do would never be there if there weren't other people who were supportive and saw something in me they believed in before I even knew it was there," she said.
"Truly, in these roles, you don't get there alone."
