Darra Murphy entered Medicine in order to do Psychiatry, but was seriously put off by his undergraduate experience of that discipline. Having visited Australia as a medical student (1975), he migrated here upon graduation from University College Dublin (1976). He recalls that he "stumbled upon" a number of psycho-analytically trained GPs whilst doing a rotation at the Alfred Hospital (1978), so he entered the training program of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP). He was fortunate to receive psycho-analytic supervision for an hour a week in his first year in general practice and also trained in clinical hypnosis at that time.

He was a country doctor for over 25 years, where he gained considerable experience in rural hospital Obstetrics, Paediatrics, Adult and Emergency Medicine, as well as Clinical Administration. He helped to establish a full-time indigenous Health Service in Morwell (1982) and went on to establish and run a teaching practice in Trafalgar (1984), where he was in practice for over 17 years. He helped to establish the Monash University Centre for Rural Health (1992) and was the Convenor and first Executive Director of the Central West Gippsland Division of General Practice (1994). He completed a Masters Degree in Family Medicine at Monash (1996). In 2001, he was recruited to the position of Director of Medical Services and Primary Care at Echuca Regional Health where he spent 3 years before finally moving back to Melbourne (2004).

During his years in Gippsland, the community had only one Consultant Psychiatrist for a population of over 150,000 people and so psychotherapy became a large part of his practice. He first trained in EMDR therapy with Sigmund Burzynski and Anthony Smith in 1999. He took supervision from Sigmund between 2005-2010 and became an EMDR Institute Facilitator in 2011. Since then he has assisted at over 20 trainings and attended 3 Master Classes. He recently became an EMDR Institute trainer. He has represented the RACGP on the Mental Health Professionals Network. He is the current President of the Australian Society for Psychological Medicine and recently helped to develop a Basic Training program in Focused Psychological Strategies for GPs. He has been in private medical practice in the western suburbs of Melbourne (Yarraville, Victoria) since 2004. Around 50% of his practice is psychotherapy.