Treatment
Panic disorder can be effectively treated with a variety of interventions including psychological therapies and medication with the evidence that cognitive behavioral therapy has the longest duration of effect, followed by specific selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. However, subsequent research by Barbara Milrod and her colleagues has shown that psychoanalytic psychotherapy is equally effective in relieving panic attacks as behavioral approaches and has fewer relapses. A psychoanalytic approach that identifies actual but dissociated causes of panic reactions may lead to rapid disappearance of symptoms.
The term anxiolytic has become nearly synonymous with the benzodiazepines, because these compounds have been for almost 40 years the drugs of choice for stress-related anxiety. Low doses of complete-agonist benzodiazepines alleviate anxiety, agitation, and fear by their actions on receptors located in the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and insula. Administration of benzodiazepines during a panic attack may result in complete relief from symptoms in as little as ten or fifteen minutes. Benzodiazepines do not treat the source of the underlying fear but rather offer rapid-onset relief from the immediate symptoms.
Read more about this topic: Panic Attack
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, “Go to sleep by yourselves.” And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)