Treatment of Agoraphobia and Panic Attacks

Changes in the Drug Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

“…The one negative study had methodological flaws that may explain the lack of results, such as assessment of patients after termination of drug therapy and the use of relatively low dosages [7], All studies ex amine a well-defined group of agoraphobic patients, and the positive studies have a number of methodological factors that tend to support the finding that imipramine is superior to placebo [8]. For example, most of the cited studies have a small number of sub jects with imipramine and a rather large pla cebo response (table I).…”

Issues in diagnosing anxiety disorders

“…Since panic attacks are also frequently reported by at least 75% of the cases in each of the anxiety disorders, it is clear that the overlap in terms of the phemonenological reports of panic episodes may be quite extensive. In addition, there are some data from pharmacological studies that show that both depression and some of the anxiety disorders, especially PD, agoraphobia, and O-C, are responsive to treatment by the same agents, suggesting some commonality among these disorders (Klein, 1981;Matuzas & Glass, 1983). Finally, phobias of various sorts and generalized anxiety have long been recognized as complications of depression (Barlow, 1983;Jarret & Schnurr, 1979;Marks, 1970).…”