What is panic disorder?
To understand panic disorder, you first have to understand what are panic attacks.
A panic attack occurs when a person experiences symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, tingling sensations, sweating, feelings of unreality or of being “out-of-body,” and fears of going crazy or dying. These symptoms can come on suddenly, but are typically short-lived.
Panic disorder occurs when a person fears having a panic attack in situations where escape would be difficult or embarrassing, and therefore avoids such situations, or endures them with very high anxiety. It is often described as a “fear of fear.”
The avoidance of these situations is called “agoraphobia.”
How is panic disorder treated?
The most effective treatment for panic disorder is cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). CBT is a collaborative, short-term, action-orientated, skills-based approach that targets the individual’s unhelpful beliefs and perceptions of their panic symptoms and their ability to cope with them.
CBT for panic disorder and agoraphobia consists of a “cognitive” component, in which the individual learns to identify and change unhelpful beliefs about their panic symptoms, and a “behavioral” component, in which the person gradually confronts their feared situations (i.e., “exposure”).