COMPARISON OF COGNITIVE THERAPY AND RELAXATION TRAINING FOR PANIC DISORDER

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.