McGorry and his colleagues developed an approach for young people who have symptoms of psychosis for the first time, based at the EPPIC clinic in Melbourne. This EPPIC clinic has played a key part in an
early psychosis treatment paradigm for psychiatry and has led to significant reform of mental health services, especially in the United Kingdom. The EPPIC program's approach is best represented by the catch phrase "A stitch in time." A linked development is the PACE clinic: a service for young people with sub-threshold symptoms who are at risk of developing psychosis. Initial evaluations of EPPIC showed that it was not only effective compared to the previous traditional model of care but that it was also cost effective. McGorry was awarded the
Centenary Medal in 2003 in recognition of his work on the EPPIC program. McGorry has advocated to the Australian government to create a national network of early psychosis intervention centres, based on evidence that early treatment may improve long-term outcomes.
Criticisms McGorry has faced a number of criticisms of his work. Early intervention for psychosis was initially met with resistance due to a claimed lack of evidence. In 2011, a systematic review concluded: "There is some support for specialised early intervention services, but further trials would be desirable, and there is a question of whether gains are maintained." Some critics have argued that McGorry has exaggerated the evidence for early intervention and that long-term benefits and economic savings have not been established, and one has gone as far as alleging that McGorry has "systematically misled" the Australian Government about the nature and implications of his evaluation study on EPPIC by misstating the description of the control group. In the past two decades evaluations in England and Denmark have shown that early intervention is effective over the first two years of care at least, but when patients return to traditional care some of the gains are lost. McGorry's views on giving antipsychotic medication to at-risk young people have been criticised by a number of people, including
Allen Frances the Chair of the DSM-IV Taskforce, on the basis that most at-risk young people will not become psychotic and pre-emptive treatment may be risky. A proposed trial of the antipsychotic medication
quetiapine, led by McGorry, attracted criticism on ethical grounds. He has been accused of having a conflict of interest in using his position on a government advisory committee to advocate for programs that he founded. McGorry has denied that he has any conflict of interest and a spokesperson for the Australian government stated that McGorry was just one member of the Mental Health Expert Working Group, which was made up of experts from a range of health and non-health sectors, plus consumer and carer representatives and 'while these consultations helped to inform the development of the government's record mental health package, decisions on the specific content...were solely a matter for the government'. On 25 September 2012, Western Australian member of parliament Martin Whitely made a speech in parliament criticising the Australian Government for its support of McGorry's proposals. Whitely said that McGorry had made overblown claims for his programs and that they had been accepted without proper scrutiny. ==Headspace==