MH1: Anxiety Disorders - Marta Buszewicz Judy Leibowitz

Speaker key

MBMarta Buszewicz

JLJudy Leibowitz

IVInterviewer

MBMy name is Marta Buszewicz and I work as a GP at Parliament Hill Medical Centre and, also, at UniversityCollege, Department of Primary Care.

JLAnd my name is Judy Leibowitz. I’m a Clinical Psychologist and I head up the iCope Service in Camden which provides psychological therapies for Primary Care.

MBOur talk today was about anxiety disorders, their prevalence, the fact that they tend to be underdetected in Primary Care and ways of managing them. We also had a contribution from Anxiety UK service user organisation.

IVWhat are the key points from your talk that you’d like to pass on to GPs?

MBI think the first key point is that anxiety disorders are very common and commoner in fact than major depression in the community. They tend to be underdetected in Primary Care. They’re often chronic and comorbid with depression or with physical health disorders, and substance misuse can be a significant problem.

JLThere are evidence-based interventions, both psychological and medical, for anxiety disorders. The earlier people are treated, the better. We would urge GPs to consider referral for people they identify as soon as possible and particularly for psychological CBT-based interventions where the evidence is strongest.

MBThere’s also some evidence for self-help interventions in this group, and at a GP level, when you first meet someone with an anxiety disorder and it’s first detected, then encouraging them to access the website or the literature around anxiety disorders is very worth doing, and there’s more evidence for this in anxiety than there is in depression.

IVWhat are the specialist services in Camden?

JLThe iCope Service in Camden has staff linked to every GP practice. Your practice should have particular iCope staff that you can refer people to if you identify people with anxiety problems. The Service works in partnership with a number of voluntary sector organisations in Camden as well that we could refer people on to, if that’s appropriate. These are the Bereavement Service, Women and Health, Age UK Camden and Nafsiyat.

IVWhat services exist for those who do not speak English as a first language?

JLWe work together with Interpreters where necessary and we also have some Same-Language Therapists for some of the more common languages in Camden, Bengali, Sylheti and Somali, and we work very closely with Nafsiyat which provides a whole range of Same-Language Counsellors for many of the other common languages in Camden.

IVHow do people get referred?

JLGPs or other members of the practice staff team can refer people to the Service via an email address. There is a referral form that you can find on the Camden GP website to help you refer, but people can also self-refer to the Service via the website, which is via a telephone number or an email address. We would be happy to receive referrals either via the practice or people can self-refer.

IVWhat is the role of GPs in working with people with anxiety disorders?

MBGPs have a very important potential role initially in detecting the anxiety disorder or asking suitable questions which allow people to talk about their anxiety disorder, as they may be reluctant to do so. There’s also quite an important potential role in helping people recognise the thought patterns which they may be going through and helping them to become less anxious as a consequence of recognising the thought patterns and how they may be affecting their behaviours and, finally, explaining to the patient what’s likely to be involved in referral on to something like the iCope Service and what that may entail and keeping contact with them, if necessary, so they can let them know how they’re getting on.

IVIs there anything else you’d like to say?

JLWe’d like to emphasize that providing good self-help materials about anxiety can be a very effective thing that GPs can offer to people. From our presentation and the presentation from Anxiety UK you’ll get some examples of good self-help materials that you could suggest to people. In addition to that the iCope website also provides some information about good self-help materials and, at Camden, Books on Prescription programme done together with Camden Libraries also provides recommended self-help materials that might be really helpful for people with anxiety.

IVWhat are your contact details?

MBWe’re very happy to be contacted by anybody who has some queries following our talk. My contact details are .

JLMy contact details are .

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