Panic Disorder

... What lurks behind dressing-room door?

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...ba href=/panic disorder/a/b; the rational treatment for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder; tools for assessing severity of generalized anxiety disorder; and treatment options and considerations for late-life anxiety.

The articles present a wealth of clinical material and lot of food for thought.

Nonetheless, brooding over the articles evokes more questions.

Where does the universal experience of normal anxiety end and pathological anxiety begin?

How does one decide whether to use CBT or medication in children and adolescents (especially since no medication is approved by the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration for pediatric anxiety disorders)?

Do benzodiazepines, especially the old ones, deserve the bad name they have received?

What is the role of anxiety in healthy development?

What is the social function of anxiety?

How much does personality makeup contribute to the experience of and coping with anxiety?

And there are certainly many others.

Hopefully, this Special Report will help the reader address some of the important decisions in the management of anxiety disorders.

It may also help in finding answers to some of the aforementioned questions raised.

It reminds us how little we know, how much still has to be done, and how much more our approach to treatment selection still reflects art rather than science.

Dr.

Balon is professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

Psychiatric Times extends its gratitude to Dr.

Balon for his assistance in planning...

...ba href=/panic disorder/a/b (PD) was thought to be rare in children and adolescents, the prevalence in community samples ranges between 0.5% and 5.0%, and in pediatric psychiatric clinics from 0.2% to as much as 10%.

Psychoeducation and psychosocial treatments are recommended, and it appears that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are a safe and promising treatment for children and adolescents with PD.

One study tested the hypotheses that offspring of parents with ba href=/panic disorder/a/b and offspring with anxiety disorders display relatively greater sensitivity and attention allocation to fear provocation (Pine et al., 2005).

Results supported an association between parental ba href=/panic disorder/a/b and offspring responses to fear provocation using computer-generated face viewing.

Agoraphobia, the fear of open or public places, is related to ba href=/panic disorder/a/b and often is experienced as a fear of leaving the home.

Agoraphobia is understood as developing in response to the fear of having a panic attack in a public place, or as having anxiety about being in places and situations from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing.

Although agoraphobia can occur alone, it most often occurs in the presence of ba href=/panic disorder/a/b (Varley and Smith, 2003).

Social phobia.

Social phobia is manifested by a marked and persistent fear in one or more interpersonal or performance situations.

This may be manifest as fear of rejection by peers, fear of public speaking or inability to use a public restroom.

It is understood...