Monitor devoted a front page article on Y2K and anxiety disorders earlier this year, and a subsequent letter in the Monitor extended the psychological effects to include depression. As psychologists consider their responses to local media queries, I would propose an alternative view on this topic by stating that it is largely a non-issue. By this, I mean that the association between Y2K concerns and psychopathology is very uncommon, and when it is observed it likely does not represent a causal relation. I polled several members of our mood and anxiety disorders research group at the University of Manitoba, who together see hundreds of new patients per year. After collectively scratching their heads, some of the psychologists and psychiatrists could think of one or two patients where the new millennium had been raised in a clinical context.
Some analogues exist with other disorders.
Similarly, portable transistor radios have likely been replaced by the Internet as a medium of messages in paranoid delusional content. In short, the content has changed but the psychopathology has not. This does not constitute an anxiety disorder. Further, catastrophic thinking is common in a variety of anxiety disorders. Dr. Ladouceur and colleagues at Laval University have also demonstrated that intolerance of uncertainty is an important psychological process in generalized anxiety disorder.