David Kissane

Professor David William Kissane, AC (born 1951) is an Australian psychiatrist specialising in psychiatric oncology and palliative care. Since 2018, he has been the inaugural Chair in Palliative Medicine Research at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He has also held professorships at the University of Melbourne (Foundation Professor and Director of Palliative Medicine, 1996–2003), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City (Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and inaugural Jimmie C. Holland Chair in Psychiatric Oncology, 2003–2012; concurrently Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University), and Monash University (Head, Department of Psychiatry, 2012–2019). In 2008, he received the Arthur M. Sutherland Award of the International Psycho-Oncology Society (IPOS). On 26 January 2018 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia. He is the Regent of the Australian Subpriory of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Professor Kissane has been described as a "strident opponent of euthanasia legislation who co-authored a landmark report with Dr Nitschke into the deaths that occurred under the NT's euthanasia laws". He is the older brother of the Australian writer Andy Kissane.
In May 2020, he was awarded a AU$1.06 million grant for a research project on improving the care of palliative care patients with mental illness or emotional distress.