Panic Attack Treatment

The purpose of this website is to provide some resources on panic attack treatment for people suffering from panic attacks or panic disorder.

Panic attacks can occur suddenly and without any apparent provocation, causing intense anxiety and feelings of impending doom which result in symptoms such as heart palpitations, trembling, shortness of breath, sweating, and feelings of choking (Kaplan & Sadock, 1998). If you can relate to at least four of the afore mentioned symptoms aswell as having experienced sudden and unprovoked anxiety feelings you may qualify for a diagnosis of panic disorder.

Panic disorder is simply the presence of spontaneous panic attacks. There is no set frequency of panic attacks for the diagnosis of panic disorder and panic attacks can range from a couple per year to several per day.

The lifetime prevalence rates of panic attacks is approximately 5%. Panic disorder has a lifetime prevalence rate of approximately 3%. Agoraphobia has lifetime prevalence rates ranging between .6% and 6%. That means that in a country of 200 million people approximately 10 million will be affected by panic attacks with 6 million of those qualifying for a panic disorder diagnosis.

There is little evidence to suggest that panic disorder is caused by genetic factors which is good when thinking about panic attack treatment because it means that it is A more learned response and subsequently treatable (as opposed to manageable if it were genetic). Nonetheless there are important biological factors that contribute to the onset of a panic attack. Most notably the brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) that are implicated in a panic attack are serotonin, norepinephrine, and GABA. Psychological theories of panic disorder link panic attacks to classical conditioning processes whereby a neutral stimuli (an event that has no inherent emotional impact like a bus ride) is paired with an unconditional stimuli (an event that contains automatic and powerful not promotional content like a panic attack). This can lead to the neutral stimuli developing the same properties as the unconditional stimuli and can occur after even a single pairing. In other words if a panic attack occurs on a bus then buses in general can come to elicit a panic attack and have the same intense and negative emotional qualities as the original panic attack. Unfortunately, this is not all, because this conditioning process can be even more generalised than this. For example, the individual that has a panic attack on a bus is not only on a bus, but is also in public. Hence, panic attack gets associated with public places.

With regards to panic attack treatment cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) techniques are among the most effective. The major focus for CBT in panic attack treatment is to provide instruction about false beliefs and information about panic attacks. This instruction relates to the tendency to misinterpret bodily sensations as indicative of doom, death, and panic attacks. Panic attack treatment also typically includes training and relaxation techniques to provide individuals with a sense of control over their anxiety. Other panic attack treatment techniques include training to control hyperventilation that frequently occurs at the onset of a panic attack, and also exposure techniques where the individual is exposed to gradually increasing amounts of the feared stimulus and over time becomes habituated or desensitized to the feared stimulus.

click here to learn a proven, simple treatment to completely cure panic attacks

References
Kaplan, H. I., & Sadock, B. J. (1998). Synopsis of psychiatry: behavioral sciences/clinical psychiatry (Eighth ed.). Maryland: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

One emerging evidence-based treatment for Panic Disorder is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The acceptance component of ACT is based upon the premise that fighting and struggling against our problems can sometimes worsen them. In much of life and certainly in Western life active confrontation of problems is the best approach. However, this is not always so. Indeed, it is likely that the most serious psychological pain in our lives is pain that we have lived with and unsuccessfully tried to annihilate for many years. This psychological pain can cause the person with Panic Disorder to essentially pause their life, awaiting some distant day when they will have washed their hands of their problem.

Sadly, pouring all their energy into the battle they lose sight of much of the beauty, goodness, and possibility that lie outside the desolate radius of the battle zone. ACT approaches the treatment of Panic Attacks by providing skills and strategies to extricate oneself from the battlefield. Though the battle may rage on for a time, the individuals life need not remain entangled and defined by it. One can choose to sit on the sidelines and simply observe and acknowledge their psychological pain rather than engage and battle with it. As a poet once said, "imagine if there was a war, and no one turned up".

Each week I will endeavour to post articles that outline some of these strategies. For a proven technique in dealing with Panic Disorder try out Panic Attack Treatment with Panic Away

This model is particularly interesting because it attempts to develop an overarching theory relevant to all anxiety disorders. The basis for the model concerns a "complex biopsychosocial process," involving the interaction between an evolutionary based ancient alarm system, crucial for survival. This primitive biological alarm system is postulated to react to actual danger with a set of energizing responses, termed a "true alarm"; these responses prepare the organism to react in appropriate ways to threat such as escape/flight, freezing/immobility, or aggression/attack. However, during a period following a major threat-related life event, genetically vulnerable individuals become prone to spontaneous discharges of the alarm system. These are essentially "false alarms" that can over time become conditioned and associated with non-threatening internal bodily felt sensations such as increased heart rate, sweaty palms, or anxiety. The formation of such conditioned associations are particularly likely if these associations are made in situations where the ability to react appropriately to the panic is blocked (such as by fight/flight responses).

This conditioning process then results in the occurrence of learned alarms. For Panic Disorder to result, there is a further crucial step, however. Anxious expectation over the likelihood of future false alarms must develop, and is said to be a crucial psychological vulnerability. In other words people who go on to develop Panic Disorder following a period of false alarm panic experiences have likely experienced significant worry regarding the likelihood of future panic attacks and its consequences (such as public humiliation).