COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY OF PANIC DISORDER WITH SECONDARY MAJOR DEPRESSION - A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

Controlled studies indicate that cognitive-behavioral therapy eliminat es panic attacks in greater than 80% of patients who suffer from panic disorder. However, because most of the screening procedures used in t hose studies called for excluding patients who were depressed, a quest ion arises as to the extent to which these results apply to patients w ho are clinically depressed in addition to having panic attacks. Accor dingly, an attempt was made in the present study to determine whether or not panic patients who are clinically depressed could be treated as successfully as those who are not clinically depressed. Two multiple baseline A-A1-A-B across-subjects designs were used, one to test 8 pan ic Ss with major depression and the second to test 7 panic Ss without major depression. In Baseline (A), Ss monitored their panic attacks da ily. During the A1 phase, a program of information on panic attacks pr esented as psychotherapy was instituted to assess the effects of nonsp ecific factors, followed by a second baseline phase (A). Cognitive-beh avioral therapy (B) was then introduced. Results showed that cognitive -behavioral therapy was significantly superior to information-based th erapy in the reduction of panic attacks. No significant differences we re found between depressed and nondepressed patients.