Anxiety expert to give coping tips at free talk
ONE of Ireland’s leading mental health experts is coming to Sligo this week to give a free public talk on anxiety.
Dr Harry Barry has a long-standing interest around mental health especially the management of anxiety and depression.
Ten years ago he wrote his first book on the subject, Flagging The Problem: A New Approach To Mental Health, in which he touched on the main mental health problems found in a GP’s waiting room.
His 6 th book Flagging Anxiety and Panic got to number one in the best – seller list in Ireland. It combines a novel new approach to combining Neuroscience concepts with CBT to assist people eliminate or learn to deal with panic attacks, phobias, social anxiety and general anxiety.
There are a lot of people out there suffering from anxiety in all its forms — general, social, acute, phobias, post-traumatic stress — all the way to the dreaded and debilitating panic attacks.
Dr Barry says: “People suffer in silence. What commonly brings people to me for the first time is that while they may have a history of being generally anxious, eventually they get persistent, lowgrade physical symptoms.
“They’re exhausted all the time or they can’t sleep or they have irritable bowel or they feel short of breath. They’ ll ask for help with those things when what they really need help with is the anxiety that’s causing the symptoms.
“I have seen people in some cases who have had panic attacks for 20 or 30 years without getting help.
“The problem is that anxiety was the poor relation of depression for many years. If you weren’t depressed, if you were ‘only’ anxious, the attitude was: ‘sure that’s nothing’.
“The language we used to use for someone who was anxious didn’t help either. They were either neurotic or they were suffering with their nerves. It was quite disparaging.
“The funny thing is that, when we spoke of suffering from nerves, there was a certain amount of truth in it because we now know that anxiety is a neurological response,” he said.
Dr Harry Barry will be speaking at The Clayton Hotel, Sligo on Thursday 26 th October at 7pm. The public talk has been organised and sponsored by Sligo Mental Health Association. To register please email your name to: info@alive2 thrive.ie