For most of her career since becoming a specialist psychiatrist, Dr Frater has worked in tertiary hospitals within the general medical and neurology wards and at the Mater Mother’s Hospital (the largest public birthing hospital in Australia). She has worked within the Mater Advanced Epilepsy Unit as a neuropsychiatrist – working with people with epilepsy who also have mental health conditions and in the management of treatment-refractory epilepsy where advanced surgical procedures (such as temporal lobes resection or stereo-tactic EEG, VNS) are being considered as part of a multidisciplinary approach to management.

Dr Frater has also worked in (the now defunct) Mater Functional Neurological Disorders Unit and spent time as part of the team delivering FND masterclass presentations to regional areas around Australia to upskill clinicians and allied health practitioners in the management of FND. She now works in Melbourne at The Alfred Hospital in the same sub-specialised role – working with the Epilepsy Service and the Functional Neurological Disorders outpatient clinics. In all of these positions Dr Frater has been a clinical supervisor for psychiatry trainees and spent time in teaching and educational roles within the hospital.

Furthermore, being previously based at Mater Mother’s Hospital Qld, she was heavily involved in developing and delivering the inpatient Consultation-Liaison Service to the Mother’s Hospital for inpatients (pre-birth and post-birth) and developed an outpatient program to deliver outpatient appointments for pregnant mothers requiring mental health and medication assessments as part of their pregnancy management. Dr Frater extended this to develop an outpatient Perinatal Service to see mothers from conception through to one year post-delivery. During this time, she was involved in the Steering Committee and the Model of Care Working Group for the development of a new Inpatient Mother-Baby Unit known as Catherine’s House (for mothers, babies and families) which opened in 2023.

Dr Frater was awarded a Mater Early Career Research Grant for a project looking into Perinatal Mental Health in fathers and developing a fathers-oriented program to help navigate the transition to fatherhood.

In addition to the above, she worked in the Private Emotional Health Unit at Mater, a dedicated inpatient unit for adolescents and young adults (aged 16-26). It was within this role that Dr Frater also developed a strong interest in issues affecting younger people, especially in the areas of ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, FND, tic disorders, and substance use disorders. During her specialty training, Dr Frater was fortunate to be involved in a number of clinical research projects and spent time in a newly created ‘Psychogeriatric Research Registrar’ position, spending time between Metro South Hospital & Health Service and the Queensland Brain Institute, and has been an author in a number of published papers in scientific journals. Working in public hospital settings has given Dr Frater a good understanding of the issues that face people who have complex medical conditions and the difficulties of navigating appropriate care in a resource-stretched environment.