Claire weekes biography

'Face, accept, float, let time pass' – that's the six-word prescription for anxiety devised by Australian doctor and self-help pioneer Claire Weekes ( - ).

Yet despite her international bestsellers and rich contribution to how anxiety is understood and treated, Weekes has never quite got the credit she deserves.

In her new biography The Woman Who Cracked the Anxiety Code, journalist Judith Hoare tells Weekes' extraordinary story and tries to set the record straight.

Weekes wrote about anxiety from personal experience, Hoare tells Kim Hill.

As a young zoology scholar in the s, she started getting heart palpitations and a cardiologist couldn't find anything wrong.

Weekes was wrongly diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanatorium in the country.

There, amongst dying people, she became even more distressed yet still managed to finish her doctorate and win a scholarship to London.