Jg. Beck et al., COMPARISON OF COGNITIVE THERAPY AND RELAXATION TRAINING FOR PANIC DISORDER, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 62(4), 1994, pp. 818-826
Current approaches to the treatment of panic disorder (PD) include a t
reatment package consisting of relaxation training (RT), cognitive the
rapy (CT), and exposure-based components. In an examination of the sep
arate effects of RT and CT without formally taught exposure of any for
m, 64 PD patients were assigned randomly to one of these treatment pro
tocols or to a minimal-contact control (MCC) condition. Both RT and CT
were superior to the MCC condition on a variety of measures pertainin
g to panic, global psychological functioning, agoraphobic fear, and ot
her associated fears. A significantly greater percentage of patients w
ere classified as treatment responders (based on a composite index) af
ter CT (82%) and RT (68%), compared with the control group (36%). On m
easures of agoraphobic fear, CT patients fared slightly better than RT
patients. Some support was demonstrated for specific cognitive change
s after CT, although treatment specificity was not strongly supported
overall. These results are discussed in light of current theories of P
D and the presumed importance of exposure in its treatment.