The present review examined the effect of comorbid major depressive disorder and personality disorder on the outcome of cognitive-behavioral interventions for panic disorder. Panic disorder patients often present with these comorbid conditions, but for the most part, treatment studies have paid little attention to them. Most studies on the effects of comorbidity on treatment outcome address pha...

Research evaluating the relationship of comorbidity to treatment outcome for panic disorder has produced mixed results. The current study examined the relationship of comorbid depression and anxiety to treatment outcome in a large-scale, multi-site clinical trial for cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for panic disorder. Comorbidity was associated with more severe panic disorder symptoms, althoug...

This article is part of a new initiative in Evidence-based Mental Health, namely the serialisation of chapters of Clinical Evidence (a summary of the best available evidence on common clinical interventions updated regularly by the BMJ Publishing Group). This article is based on material presented in: Kumar S, Oakley-Browne M. Panic disorder. Clinical Evidence 2002; 8: 1003–9. For this review, ...

BACKGROUND We examined prospectively determined bidirectional associations between smoking and panic and other anxiety disorders and their temporal ordering of onset in a representative community sample of adolescents and young adults. METHODS Baseline and 4-year follow-up data were used from the Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology Study, a prospective longitudinal study of adolesce...

Panic disorder is one of the chronic and disabling anxiety disorders. There has been evidence for either genetic heterogeneity or complex inheritance, with environmental factor interactions and multiple single genes, in panic disorder's etiology. Linkage studies have implicated several chromosomal regions, but no research has replicated evidence for major genes involved in panic disorder. Resea...

AIMS Anxiety a core feature of panic disorder, is linked to function of the amygdala. Volume alterations in the brain of patients with panic disorder have previously been reported, but there has been no report of amygdala volume association with anxiety. METHODS Volumes of hippocampus and amygdala were manually measured using magnetic resonance imaging obtained from 27 patients with panic dis...

Panic Disorder affects around 3.5% of the population during their lifetime, affecting twice as many women. It is often comorbid with depression and other anxiety disorders. Panic disorder can be assessed by a variety of interviews and self-report questionnaires. The theoretical model underlying CBT explains panic from both a learning perspective as well as a cognitive one. Treatment comprises o...

BACKGROUND The amygdala has been known to play a pivotal role in mediating fear-related responses including panic attacks. Given the functionally distinct role of the amygdalar subregions, morphometric measurements of the amygdala may point to the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying panic disorder. The current study aimed to determine the global and local morphometric alterations of the am...

AIM To evaluate the association between idiopathic mitral valve prolapse and panic disorder. METHODS The study comprised 50 patients with idiopathic mitral valve prolapse, 50 patients with panic disorder, and 50 healthy controls. All subjects underwent echocardiographic evaluation. If idiopathic mitral valve prolapse was present, the level of prolapse was measured. To reach psychiatric diagno...