Self-monitoring with panic and anxiety disorders

Self-monitoring has become a popular assessment tool in treatment outcome r esearch and descriptive psychopathology for panic and anxiety disorders. Co mmonly used formats of self-monitoring for each anxiety disorder are descri bed. Self-monitoring is compared with self-report estimation. On the one ha nd, self-monitoring may be influenced by reactivity, as well as by attentio nal and judgmental biases that underlie fear and anxiety. On the other hand , self-monitoring may minimize certain influences that tarnish estimation, such as response demand biases, memory deficits, inflation of aversive expe riences, and availability heuristics. Issues for statistical analysis of se lf-monitored data for panic and the anxiety disorders are outlined. Finally , directions for future research and clinical use of self-monitoring are di scussed.