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10th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS and 15th
NATIONAL of CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

MONASTERIO SAN MARTÍN PINARIO
SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA (SPAIN)
16-19 NOVEMBER, 2017 
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 		Rachel Menzies
School of Psychology
The University of Sydney
AUSTRALIA
1 English
Rachel Menzies completed her honours degree in psychology at the University of Sydney, taking out the Dick Thompson Thesis Prize for her work on the dread of death and its relationship to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). She published her first paper on death fears in Clinical Psychology Review as an undergraduate student, and followed this by convening a symposium on the topic at the 8th World Congress of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies (WCBCT) in Melbourne in June, 2016. In 2017, she gave a Plenary Address at the 47th Conference of the European Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies (EABCT) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her manuscript on death fears and OCD was the lead paper in the first edition of the Australian Clinical Psychologist. She was recently featured in The Conversation Yearbook 2016, a collection of the top 1% of ‘standout articles from Australia’s top thinkers’ published by Melbourne University Press. Her upcoming book, Curing the Dread of Death, will be published by Australian Academic Press in late 2017.

CONFERENCE ABSTRACT
The role of death fears in OCD and anxiety-related disorders
The dread of death has featured in art, literature and dominated cultural practices and rituals for as long as humans have recorded their history.  For example, death as a reaper, watching and stalking the terrified living, has appeared in poetry, songs, plays and paintings across many cultures for centuries.  Although death anxiety can be associated with the development of productive coping strategies (e.g., seeking achievement, extending the self through family and relationships), it may also drive crippling fear and maladaptive coping mechanisms.  As such, it has been argued that the dread of death is a transdiagnostic construct with the potential to underpin a range of mental health problems including panic disorder, illness anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, OCD, the specific phobias, separation anxiety disorder and depression. This presentation will explore the role of the dread of death in psychopathology, and approaches to its treatment.