EFFECTIVENESS OF STAGES OF CHANGE AND ADINAZOLAM SR IN PANIC DISORDER- A NEURAL-NETWORK ANALYSIS

We ascertained the relationship of stages of change (SOC) and adinazol am SR on panic disorder in a randomized double-blind study. Outpatient s (n = 133) with panic disorder and agoraphobia were assessed for read iness to change and then were randomly assigned to adinazolam SR or to placebo in a 4 week double-blind trial. The active drug was significa ntly more effective than the placebo. After 4 weeks, patients on the d rug treatment had significantly lower anxiety on two of the measures. Two neural networks were trained with gender, history of depression, a goraphobia, readiness to change, and five anxiety measures at baseline data as inputs, and the five anxiety measures 4 weeks later as output s. The five anxiety measures were the Clinical Anxiety Scale, the Hami lton Anxiety Scale, the number of panic attacks, the Clinical Global I mpression Scale, and the Phobia Severity Scale. The networks were vali dated and sensitivity analyses showed that, in agreement with the stag es of change model, patients with low predisposition to change (Precon templators) changed more slowly than those in Contemplation or Action stages of change.