But the 22-year-old former Xavier High student, who is preparing to start her honours course at Charles Sturt University this year, is now more convinced than ever that she's on the right path.

Ms Wilcox was recently awarded the Pearson NSW Student of the Year award in the social sciences and psychology category.

“I almost lost a family member to mental illness, which was what initially drew my attention to it,” she said.

“I just thought to myself 'this sucks', and I wanted to do something about it, so I did.

“When I first started I thought psychology was just about sitting down and asking how do you feel about this or that – but it's so much more than that.”

Ms Wilcox returned from a trip to India where she had undertaken a month's worth of volunteer work on the same day she was informed of her award win.

It was that trip to India, as well as previous volunteer excursions to Cambodia and Africa, which fanned the fire to do more in her chosen field.

“In 2015 I did some volunteer work in Cambodia, it really opened my eyes and it also gave me a new perspective on things,” Ms Wilcox said.

“When I got back from that I wanted to do more volunteer work in a third world country, but more tailored towards psychology.

“I was part of a program trying to set up sustainable business solutions to tackle the needs in villages around Bangalore.

“We were doing a needs analysis in the community of Sathanur, conducting surveys and interviews to identify areas of need in the community.

“It was great, both in terms of collecting qualitative and quantitative data in large amounts, but also being able to just talk to the people there.”

That experience has enabled her to set her mind to a higher goal – opening a rural clinic specialising in eating disorders.

“There's no clinics here, there's nothing really set up to help people,” Ms Wilcox said.

“Eating disorders, from my experience, aren’t things that can be solved without having inpatient care and psychologists working towards the ultimate goal of returning to full health.

“I’d like to do something to give people access to that without travelling.”