A practical guide to Ahpra registration for overseas-qualified psychologists, including Board assessment, provisional registration, transitional programs, the exam, fees and New Zealand pathways.
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Provisional psychologist · Founder of PsychVault · Perth WA
Author
Ethan Smith
Provisional Psychologist & Founder, PsychVault
Perth, Western Australia
~1,400
Internship experience
Provisional
Professional status
Perth
Location
Founder
Role
Areas of practice
AuDHD / PDA profileAutistic individuals (ages 5–21)ADHD & SLD assessmentNeuro-affirming practiceCBT / ACT / DBT / MBTVideo game therapyNDIS & IEP assessmentsGatekeeper trainedLGBTIQA+ affirming practiceGroup interventionsMotivational InterviewingHigh-risk presentations
About
Founder and editorial contact: ethan@psychvault.com.au. Read the editorial policy and business details. Authorship does not mean an article has had independent clinical review.
Ethan H. Smith is a provisional psychologist based in Perth, Western Australia, and the founder of PsychVault. He has completed approximately 1,400 total psychology internship hours across assessment, therapeutic work, group programs, and work with neurodivergent clients and families.
His professional interests include neurodivergence, assessment, video-game-based therapeutic work, clinician development, and the systems surrounding psychology training and registration.
Ethan created PsychVault to make practical psychology resources easier to find, understand, and share. His writing covers internship pathways, supervision, registration, neuro-affirming practice, documentation, and early-career psychology.
Ethan is neurodivergent himself — PDA, AuDHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia — and approaches neurodiversity as identity, not pathology.
Therapeutic approaches
CBTACTDBTMBTSolution-Focused TherapyMotivational InterviewingVideo game therapy
Delivered individually and in groups, in-person and online.
Assessment toolkit
Cognitive & educational
- WISC-V
- WIAT-III
- Vineland (adaptive functioning)
Neurodivergence & mental health
- Conners 4 (ADHD)
- RCADS · SCAS · EDA-Q
- ASRS · SRS · AQ-child
What he writes about
- The AHPRA 5+1 internship year — logbooks, hours, and what nobody tells you
- Supervision: finding good supervisors, spotting red flags, getting the most from it
- National Psychology Examination prep and strategy
- Neuro-affirming practice and documentation for autistic and ADHD clients
- Clinical practice realities: NDIS, assessments, and building a caseload
Professional development highlights
- Autism for Mental Health Professionals: Foundations — Dr Belinda Ratcliffe (8 hrs, 2022)
- WISC-V & WIAT-III for SLD Diagnosis — Dr Melissa Stephens (2022)
- CBIT & Habit Reversal Therapy — Dr Amy Talbot (2022)
- Attachment, Neurobiology & the New Science of Psychotherapy — Prof Jeremy Holmes (2022)
- Gatekeeper Suicide Prevention Training — Mental Health Commission (~6 hrs, 2023)
- Ross Greene / PDA Conference volunteer, Optus Stadium (2024)
Neuroscience (degree)
Brain-based foundations for clinical practice & psychoeducation
Edith Cowan University
Clinical Masters coursework
Macquarie University
Centre for Emotional Health — research internship
Written by Ethan Smith
108 articles
A practical guide for international psychology students in Australia on AHPRA registration friction points, including English, checks, visas, internship timing, and Medicare systems.
A practical guide for provisional psychologists on continuity of care when therapy ends because a placement ends, including handover, consent, timing, and documentation.
A practical guide to competence boundaries, role drift, and dual relationships in Australian psychology practice, with a focus on when helpfulness becomes a second role.
Most provisional psychologists can tick the insurance declaration. Fewer can explain exactly what is covered, when to notify, and what happens across placements.
A clinician-focused guide to the gut-brain axis across anxiety, depression, autism, trauma, and autistic burnout, without overclaiming what current evidence can prove.
Autistic burnout is often a mismatch problem, not a motivation problem. A practical clinician guide to sensory load, masking costs, demand load, values mismatch, and recovery by reducing load.
Neurodivergent provisional psychologists can face a difficult double bind: disclose to someone with supervisory power, or mask through placement at a real cost to wellbeing and performance. A practical, non-prescriptive
A clinician-facing account of PDA-style resistance through predictive processing, salience network gating, precision weighting, autonomy, and clinical formulation.
A comprehensive, evidence-informed guide to why hormonal fluctuations can magnify ADHD, autism, PTSD, anxiety, depression, OCD, BPD, eating disorders, sensory overload, and cyclical capacity loss.
Provisional psychologists face placement poverty, Medicare exclusion, supervision dependency, insecure work and practitioner-level accountability before they have practitioner-level power.
A clinician-facing guide to PTSD in psychologists, risk factors, graded return to work, AHPRA mandatory notification thresholds, supervision, disclosure and recovery without unsafe overexposure.
Why small psychology training communities, dual roles, placement scarcity, and supervisor bottlenecks can create governance risks for trainees.
A systems-informed guide to enmeshment, boundaries, individuation, estrangement and mutualism, exploring how families, workplaces, training systems and professional cultures respond when people become more fully themselv
A critique of Australia's psychology training redesign, AQF8 vs AQF9, the 5+1 pathway, and why reform must fund real bottlenecks.