Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

This chapter considers the classification of anxiety disorders, and provides an overview of the literature on the relative efficacy of behavioral and cognitive treatments for the various disorders. It attempts to develop hypotheses about the nature of the psychological deficits that are involved in anxiety disorders. Early conceptualizations of neurotic anxiety in the terms of learning theory emphasized external fear cues and overt avoidance while nonexternal fear cues, including anticipated harm, were largely ignored. If exposure treatment reduces anxiety, it is plausible to hypothesize that either anxiety-disordered individuals receive less than normal spontaneous contact with their feared situations or they require more exposure for fear reduction than is normally encountered. The assumption that impairments in mechanisms of information processing underlie anxiety disorders is reflected in attempts to ameliorate them by the use of cognitive techniques.