Treating Anxiety Disorders

Treating Anxiety Disorders

Many treatments have been tried for anxiety disorders, but so far none has proven to be consistently effective.

Psychotherapy, in which the therapist helps the patient uncover underlying causes of anxiety, can be helpful in treating simple phobias and chronic, moderate anxiety. Behavior therapy has also been effective in relieving well-defined phobias. Patients with agoraphobia, for example, are trained to relax while role playing the experience of entering a big, bustling store. Sometimes they are actually taken into a store, but only after carefully monitored relaxation sessions.

Other behaviorists believe the opposite approach works better: They favor “toughening” patients by bringing them right to the heart of their greatest fear. Patients with agoraphobia are taken directly to a large, busy store and allowed to experience the full force of their anxiety, in the expectation that they will see that nothing terrible happens to them when they do so. According to some estimates, 50 percent or more of such patients can be cured by this method.
Drug therapy remains the most common from of treatment for the greatest variety of anxiety disorders. Antidepressant drugs are generally considered more effective than tranquilizers, although both are still used. But drug therapy may be less helpful than psychotherapy or behavior therapy.

Many researchers report a high relapse rate when drugs are discontinued; this may mean that the drugs “work” by suppressing the symptoms rather than by helping the patient deal with deep-rooted fears.

References :

Philip M. Boffey, “Anxiety: U.S. Seeks Improved Insight into Causes”, New York Times, August 3, 1982.

Marvin R Levy, Mark Dignan, Janet H Shirreffs, Essentials of Life & Health, Fourth Edition, Random House, New York, 1984.