Speaking on “Mental health in Australia: The good, the bad, and the frustrating.”

Dr. Peter Norton is the Professor of Clinical Psychology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and Director of the Monash FEAR Clinic. He is the author of over 140 research papers and three books, mostly focusing on transdiagnostic approaches to understanding and treating anxiety and depressive disorders. He directs the FEAR Clinic, a specialty research and training centre at Monash University. Professor Norton was recently elected as a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Anxiety disorders represent one of the most prevalent and costly psychological disorders in the world, have an estimated economic impact of over $46 billion per annum, and are associated with sizeable disability and quality of life impairment. Additionally, anxiety disorders seldom present alone, with rates of comorbid anxiety and mood disorder diagnoses as high as 60%. Professor Peter Norton, a world-leading expert in anxiety disorders, is a pioneer in transdiagnostic models of anxiety disorders - models which reconceptualise the common and unique factors across anxiety diagnoses - in an effort to develop treatments targeting the core features of anxiety disorder.

Born in Canada, Professor Norton received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The initial conceptualisation for his research came from two influences: (1) the seemingly arbitrary nature of some lines of division among anxiety disorder diagnoses, and (2) the highly similar psychosocial and pharmacological treatments applied between diagnoses. Simply put, two fears might be extremely similar but be given different anxiety diagnoses (e.g., agoraphobia and social phobia) while two other fears may appear very different but be given the same diagnosis (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder), and yet the treatments for all of these are functionally identical.

Professor Norton's work also includes refining treatments for anxiety and emotional disorders to improve dissemination and accessibility, and modifying assessment and treatment procedures to increase cross-cultural appropriateness, using a variety of clinical, questionnaires, and experimental methodological approaches.