Conference to focus on anxiety disorders

By ANGELA GREGORY

International experts believe untreated anxiety, phobic and obsessive disorders are contributing to New Zealand's suicide rates.

The medical experts, mainly psychiatrists, will present advances in the understanding of anxiety disorders and their effects at a conference in Auckland next week.

The conference, hosted by the Phobic Trust, marks the 20th anniversary of the trust's ground-breaking work with anxiety sufferers.

Phobic Trust director Marcia Read said among the speakers was an American expert on suicide prevention, Dr Jan Fawcett, who believed anxiety and related disorders were behind up to 90 per cent of suicides.

Provisional figures for the year 2000 put the number of suicides in New Zealand at 458, down from 516 in 1999.

According to Ministry of Health figures, that was the lowest total since 1986 (414).

The New Zealand Health Strategy has identified reducing suicide and suicide attempts across all ages as a priority.

Los Angeles professor of child psychiatry Dr James McCracken would discuss the family-genetic studies of childhood disorders.

Marcia Read said Dr McCracken would show anxiety problems could start at young ages, and estimated one in five children might suffer from them.

Anxiety disorders also underlaid a range of psychotic illnesses, she said.

"We are trying to get the message out this is not a small problem but huge ... 18 to 25 per cent of people in this country have some sort of anxiety disorder."

Marcia Read said the World Health Organisation had identified anxiety disorders with their co-morbid states like depression as the single largest disability in the world.

WHO had also found the problem was undertreated, unrecognised and underfunded, she said. The disorders could be linked to absenteeism, unemployment, alcoholism, drug abuse, poor social skills, and family violence.