[4] Raphael began her career as a general practitioner, working in Manly and Tasmania, before specialising in psychiatry.
[4] She worked as a research psychiatrist at the New South Wales Health Commission (1973–74) and then joined the University of Sydney as an associate professor in 1975.
[4] She moved to the University of Queensland as professor of psychiatry in 1987, before returning to Sydney as director of mental health for NSW in 1996.
She was skilled in alleviating stress and trauma following other disasters such as the Ash Wednesday bushfires (1983), the Newcastle earthquake (1989), the Bali bombings (2002) and the South East Asian tsunami (2004).
[6] In the 1984 Queens Birthday Honours, Raphael was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for "service to medicine, particularly in the field of psychiatry".