Audio news grabs

AUDIO NEWS GRABS

EMBARGOED: 12:01AM AEDT, TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 2025

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Professor Sarah Medland OAM

Lead Investigator, Living with Anxiety (LwA) study; Coordinator, Mental Health Research Program, & Group Leader (Psychiatric Genetics), QIMR Berghofer, BRISBANE

GRAB A

How many genes have been identified to date, that have helped determine an individual’s genetic predisposition to anxiety?

The genetic contributions to anxiety, come from, probably thousands of different genetic variants and genes across the genome. We don't know very many of them yet. And because there are so many and they each have really small effects, it's really not a deterministic kind of system. And so we've got a lot of small effects coming from a lot of places. And we’ve got a lot more to find.

GRAB B

What is the aim of the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

the aim of the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study is to hear from everyday Australians about their experiences of anxiety. What we're looking for is to better understand how genetic and environmental effects come together, to influence people's experience of that anxiety, and also their treatment experiences and their journey through anxiety.

GRAB C

How many volunteers & who specifically are you seeking for the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

So in the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study, we're looking to recruit around 5,000 Australian adults who are aged over 18, who have had, or currently have, an anxiety disorder. We're specifically looking for people who have had a diagnosis of anxiety disorder.

GRAB D

What’s involved in participating in the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

So to participate in the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study, what we're asking people to do is to go to the web page and take a look at the information. If they'd like to participate, they can fill out the consent form. We ask them to fill out an online questionnaire, and then we send out a kit in the mail, so that they can provide a saliva sample for us to analyse their DNA.

GRAB E

How can people volunteer for, & learn more about the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

So if you're interested in finding out more about the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study, all you need to do is to go to the website, which is livingwithanxiety.org.au. And there you'll find all the information about the study, and how to be a part of it.

GRAB F

How can Pharmacogenomics (PGx) – the study of how a person's DNA affects their drug response – benefit people living with anxiety?

So the aim of pharmacogenomic testing is to try and identify the genetic variants that might, alter your metabolism of a medication, or potentially mean that you are at greater risk of a side-effect. So there's, great promise for being able to work out a better course of treatment and to avoid side-effects, if we can develop these tests, and customise them for our community.

GRAB G

What is your message to people aged 18+, living in Australia, who have been diagnosed with anxiety?

So if you're over 18 and you're living with an anxiety disorder please consider being part of the study. Go to the website. Take a look. See if it's right for you. What we're trying to do in the living with anxiety study is to try and improve treatments. And to do that, we really need to know what works and what doesn't work in the community. What we're trying to do is to help people in the future and to build better pathways to treatment for those to come.

Professor Nick Martin

Head, Genetic Epidemiology, QIMR Berghofer & Co-Investigator, Living with Anxiety (LwA) study, BRISBANE

GRAB A

What is the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

The Living with Anxiety (LwA) study is going to look at the genetic and environmental determinants of anxiety disorders in the Australian community. These affect about 20% of females and about 10% of males.

GRAB B

Why is the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study so important?

Living with Anxiety (LwA) study is important because, anxiety really is a major public health concern – it causes a huge, number of days off work and other, hits on productivity. And the treatments for it are not very good. They're not very specific. And we think we could do a lot better if we understood a lot more about the genetic causes of it.

GRAB C

How many Australian adult volunteers do you require for the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

We're trying to recruit at least 5,000 people over 18 who have been diagnosed with anxiety disorders.

GRAB D

What is the aim of the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

The aim of the study eventually is to produce better treatments for anxiety.

GRAB E

Why is genetic profiling for personalised treatment so important?

By understanding the genes, we can understand the biochemistry. You can understand the neurochemistry, what's going on in the brain. We can design new drugs, better drugs than those that are currently available. So there really is the prospect of finding much better treatments than we knew in the past.

GRAB F

What’s involved in participating in the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

To participate in the living with anxiety study, all we ask you to do is to go to our website where you can read all about the study, fill in the questionnaire and give us a saliva sample.

GRAB G

How can people volunteer for, or learn more about the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

So to take part in the study, simply go to our website at livingwithanxiety.org.au.

Professor Ian Hickie

Co-Investigator, Living with Anxiety (LwA) study; Professor of Psychiatry &
Co-Director, Health & Policy, Brain & Mind Centre, The University of Sydney, SYDNEY

GRAB A

What puts a person at risk of developing anxiety?

If you know that someone in your family – grandmother, mother, brother, sister – has had an anxiety disorder, you're probably at increased risk. Just like blue eyes, and diabetes, and other things we inherit. These things run in family. So understanding familial risk, which is largely genetic risk. If certain things have happened during childhood, very traumatic experiences things have gone really wrong in terms of abusive or neglected parenting that constitutes risk. And then other circumstances, stuff happens to people. Very traumatic things can happen throughout a person's life, and that will increase the risk, that they'll develop an anxiety disorder.

GRAB B

What is the principal aim of the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

So the principal aim of the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study is to be able to better determine what are the real reasons, the underlying reasons you can't know, genetic and otherwise, that tell us who will respond best, from day one, to the treatments that are available for these common disorders.

GRAB C

How many volunteers & who specifically are you seeking for the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

To make this study work, what we really need are 5,000 Australians over 18 years of age, who have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. When we take that, put it together with other international studies, then we have enough people to really find out what sits underneath your own vulnerability to these conditions.

GRAB D

What will cracking the genetic code of anxiety disorders enable?

One of the things that people don't really understand about anxiety is the importance to which genetics matter. What you've inherited from your parents, from your grandparents. We all understand that about eye colour, or height, or weight, or other characteristics. Everyone tends to think that anxiety is just what happened in their world now. Everyone has a story as to why they're anxious now, but in truth, there's an underlying genetic code. There are things you don't know that would tell us much more why you're at risk, but even more importantly, which treatments you may respond to best. And that's what we'd really like to know.

GRAB E

Why should Australians volunteer for this genetic study?

Our previous experience with Australians is they’re great volunteers we’ve been very fortunate with people who have been diagnosed with anxiety or depressive disorders to contribute to genetic studies. You, if you volunteer you’ll be really helping yourself and others in the future to do the best we can to personalize treatments, to develop better treatments.

GRAB F

What is your message to Australians aged 18+ who are living with, or at risk of developing anxiety?

So if you're an Australian, aged over 18 years, and you're living with anxiety, you can make a really big difference. Find out more about yourself, but also help, to provide better insights into treatments for you, and for others in the future. All you have to do is join the study.

Associate Professor Elizabeth Scott

Co-Investigator, Living with Anxiety (LwA) study; Principal Research Fellow & Academic Lead, Brain & Mind Centre, The University of Sydney, SYDNEY

GRAB A

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a normal part of human experience. So if we didn't get anxious, we wouldn't be able to protect ourselves from threat, from challenge. We wouldn't be able to deal with complex situations. So anxiety both protects us, but it also helps us to perform. So if you get a bit anxious for an exam, you study harder you push yourself, you perform better. So anxiety is really part of normal experience. What is not normal is, when that develops into an anxiety disorder.

GRAB B

What causes anxiety?

So we know quite a lot about what causes normal anxiety, physiological anxiety, when your brain alarm system goes off. So we understand some of the physiology of that. We don't really understand what happens when people develop persistent, chronic or recurrent anxiety that becomes really disabling.

GRAB C

How common is anxiety in Australia?

About 40% of people will experience an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. And about half of those will experience a very severe disorder that requires proper assessment and treatment. So it's very common.

GRAB D

How does anxiety co-occur with other mental health conditions?

It commonly occurs with depression. It can occur with alcohol and substance disorders. It occurs with other, more serious disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. So it's a very common component of many other mental health conditions.

GRAB E

What puts a person at risk of developing anxiety?

Anxiety runs in families. You don't necessarily have the same anxiety disorder. It can be different. But that is a very common experience. So anxiety runs in my family for instance. Obviously, things like adverse life experiences, childhood trauma or abuse, having, you know, difficulties in life early in life or experiencing a lot of life, stress or strain can increase your vulnerability to anxiety. And then there are other conditions that you develop – physical health problems or other things that can affect your kind of overall health and wellbeing, that can also increase your likelihood of developing an anxiety disorder.

GRAB F

What are the typical symptoms of anxiety?

Anxiety is a really physiological condition. So in addition to the kind of the thinking, the thoughts that you get when you worry, the worry about something bad is going to happen. People also get the physiological arousal. Their heart rate goes up, they breathe more rapidly, they feel hot and cold, or they feel shaky, or they tremble, or they feel that they might faint.

GRAB G

How can anxiety affect a person’s quality of life?

It can affect your social interactions. It can affect relationships, can affect your capacity to go to school or engage in education or work. And in the longer term, it can have adverse effects on your physical health. So it's not good to have the alarm system running all the time in your brain, so it can lead to people avoiding doing certain things, taking care of themselves. It can lead to people drinking too much alcohol or using drugs to try and calm themselves down. So can have quite massive implications on your life.

GRAB H

What is the Living with Anxiety study (LwA) & what is its aim?

The Living with Anxiety study I think is a really important study. What we're trying to understand is what is the genetic make up, the genotype of people who have had anxiety or living with anxiety compared to people who've never had it. So to compare the genes between different individuals, so we can understand what some of the mechanisms are in this kind of emotional and physiological disorder. Develop better treatment, develop better preventative strategies, and really support people to have better lives.

GRAB I

How many volunteers & who specifically are you seeking for the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

We are seeking 5000 volunteers over the age of 18 living in Australia who have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

GRAB J

How can people volunteer for, & learn more about the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study?

So for those people who are interested in volunteering, go to the website livingwithanxiety.org.au and help us out.

GRAB K

What is your message to people aged 18+, living in Australia, who have been diagnosed with anxiety?

If you're over 18 and living in Australia with an anxiety disorder, we would love you to help us with our study. We would also love it if you could encourage your family members who have had anxiety disorders, who are living in Australia within that age range, to contribute to the study. The more we understand, the more we understand about what runs in particular families, the better we are able to manage these conditions in the future.

Krish, 26

Small business owner & outdoors enthusiast who changed her lifestyle to better manage her anxiety, BLUE MOUNTAINS

GRAB A

For how long do you suspect you had been living with anxiety before your diagnosis?

I think I suspect that I was living with anxiety for a lot of my youth growing up, and I think it just snowballed to a point where I actually got diagnosed.

GRAB B

What events led to your diagnosis of anxiety and made you seek medical attention?

There were a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows. And the low lows were when, you know, I would lash out and I'd kind of start screaming. And that's when my parents, started to realise, because until then it was kind of kept on the down low. So when it got to that point is when, yeah, they pushed me to, to go seek help.

GRAB C

What series of events triggered any feelings of anxiety during your childhood?

Yeah. So we moved from India to Australia when I was five. Then we moved to Wollongong for a bit. I've jumped schools quite a bit as well, so I guess I didn't have like one relationship for a long time. I was always meeting new people and I was very young as well. So that mixed with school, I guess, that led me to where I, where I ended up.

GRAB D

At what point did your mum, who is a GP, grow increasingly concerned for your welfare?

Yep, so my mum's a GP and I'm sure she's seen many cases just like mine. But maybe she didn't understand the extent of what I was going through. I think it was like, oh, yeah, she's doing her HSC. She's stressed. That's normal. But then as, um, she started to see more of my symptoms and me, the, the night kind of night terrors, I guess you might call it. That's when she became increasingly worried.

GRAB E

Do you have a family history of anxiety?

So my family history of anxiety. Nothing diagnosed, nothing official. But I can see why I might get some of my anxious traits from just growing up and always on the move.

GRAB F

How does it feel to live with anxiety?

Living with anxiety feels like I'm constantly, my mind’s spiraling. It's bouncing between different things, different scenarios, that may not happen. It's kind of an uneasy feeling as well. Especially if the anxiety is related to an event or to something coming up. So a lot of sleepless nights for me and just this, like, really tight feeling in my stomach. So it kind of feels like you're getting sick. Yeah. Not a nice feeling.

GRAB G

How has living with anxiety affected your life from a physical perspective?

I used to pick my nails. So it was visible. It wasn't nice to look at. So that was something I was also ashamed of, and would try and cover it up. Physically quite draining as well. Especially I would be in my thoughts at night time, which would keep me up. And then having school early in the morning. So it kind of put me out, of place. So yeah, quite draining physically.

GRAB H

How has living with anxiety affected life with your partner?

Living with anxiety with my partner back then it just amplified the low lows. And because I didn't understand what was going on or how to get help, unfortunately he got the, he kind of had to deal with it and see me through that, which I guess was difficult for him as well.

GRAB I

Why is the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study important?

Living with Anxiety study is really important because it's trying to find the genetic causes that may lead to somebody having anxiety, ultimately define treatment, but also prevention.

GRAB J

How impactful do you think the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study will be?

I think it's going to have a huge impact on the lives of Australians and, a lot of other people around the world as well.

GRAB K

What is your message to other Australians living with anxiety?

So my message to people living with anxiety is that you don't have to do it alone. You can get help. There's so many resources out there. And even participating in the Living with Anxiety (LwA) study, you can be part of that change, in helping yourself and so many other people. So definitely, get the help you need. Be involved, and help make that change happen.

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