Overview

The APS hosts this webinar with the APS College of Clinical Psychologists.

Research suggests that death anxiety may be a transdiagnostic and causal factor in a variety of different mental health concerns. Learning how to treat the fear of death may be crucial in achieving stable, long-term recovery in people with a broad range of anxiety and mood-related mental health problems.

The webinar will:

• outline the current evidence-base for the efficacy of death anxiety treatments,

• describe a number of strategies drawing from various therapeutic and philosophical orientations to target death anxiety, and

• equip participants to integrate existential work with standard cognitive and behavioural treatments for a variety of mental health disorders.

Level of Learning

Foundational. This activity is targeted to those new to the topic.

Duration of access

Access to the recording and presenter slides is for 12 months from the date of confirmed registration.

APS CPD-Approved

This activity has been assessed against the APS Standards for CPD activities and approved for its education quality. Learn more about the APS CPD Approval process

Related activities

Webinar: Understanding and assessing death anxiety: The key to comprehensive case formulations. This webinar focuses on understanding and assessing death anxiety and provides more context to the webinar on treating death anxiety.

CPD Frequently Asked Questions

Refer to the APS CPD Frequently Asked Questions for general and technical information when undertaking APS Professional development activities.

Activity details

• On-demand webinar recording

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this webinar, participants should be able to:

• describe the current evidence base for death anxiety treatments,

• apply various cognitive and behavioural procedures used in treating death anxiety, and

• identify effective tailored treatment approaches to the individual's presentation.

Presenter(s)

Dr Rachel Menzies MAPS

About the presenter(s)

Dr Rachel Menzies is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, where she completed her honours, masters and doctoral degrees in psychology. In addition to her academic work researching death anxiety, Rachel is a clinical psychologist and director of the Menzies Anxiety Centre, which she established in order to improve access to psychological treatment for death anxiety.
Rachel's experimental work on fear of death and psychopathology has been published in several leading journals. Rachel can regularly be heard on national and international radio, popular podcasts and at relevant public events (e.g. The Festival of Death and Dying, Adelaide Writers Week). In 2019, she completed an invited workshop tour on the dread of death across seven cities for the Australian Association for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (AACBT). In 2021, she won the national PhD Prize from the Australian Psychological Society for her work of death anxiety and its relationship with mental health. Rachel has also published five books on the topic of existential issues. In 2022, Rachel won the Nib People’s Choice Literary Award and the Alex Buso Shortlist Prize for her recent book, Mortals.