Dr Daphne Bryan

Dr Bryan's clinical work focuses on OCD, obsessive compulsive related disorders and anxiety, with particular expertise in perfectionism, obsessionality, and body-focused repetitive behaviours including trichotillomania (hair pulling) and dermatillomania (skin picking). She completed specialist training in skin picking and hair pulling through the OCD Center of Los Angeles, and draws on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, schema-focused therapy and Metacognitive Therapy, tailored to each client's presentation.

Alongside her individual work, she has delivered CBT and ACT group programs and authored programs on cyberbullying and self-esteem, and has presented her research at the AACBT conference. Her particular expertise in body-focused repetitive behaviours, an area many clinicians see rarely and feel underprepared for, means she is often the person colleagues turn to for complex trichotillomania and skin picking
presentations. She has a longstanding interest in translating evidence-based treatment into practical, usable resources for clients, which is central to how she approaches both her clinical work and her teaching.

As a board-approved STAP supervisor, Dr Bryan provides supervision to psychologists working in her areas of special interest, supporting the next generation of clinicians entering OCD and anxiety treatment. She takes a warm, structured and pragmatic approach, and is known for making complex clinical ideas accessible to the people she trains. Supervisees value that she teaches from live clinical experience rather than theory alone, drawing on the same OCD and OCRD cases she manages week to week, which is exactly the grounding the OCD Training Institute is  built to offer.

Dr Bryan and Dr O'Leary have worked together at The OCD Clinic Brisbane for more than a decade. Their co-authored workbook reflects the treatment approach they use in daily practice, developed as a practical resource for clinicians and clients. This same commitment to translating clinical expertise into accessible, usable tools underpins their work with the OCD Training Institute.

Dr Bryan's work with the OCD Training Institute grows out of a long clinical collaboration with Dr Emily O'Leary at The OCD Clinic Brisbane. Over more than a decade working side by side, the two have developeda shared, consistent approach to OCD and OCRD treatment. Their co-authored workbook is the most visible product of that partnership, translating that day-to-day approach into a resource other clinicians can pick up and use with their own clients.

Alongside her practice across Brisbane and Singapore, she supervises psychologists entering the field and contributes to the Institute's teaching and resource development. Her role reflects a wider aim she and Dr O'Leary share: extending genuine specialist OCD training beyond a single clinic, so that clinicians who rarely encounter these presentations can still learn to treat them well. This combination of hands-on clinical work, supervision and resource development is what she brings to the Institute's programs.