Brief Cognitive Behaviour Therapy of Panic Disorder

The aim of the present pilot study was to investigate if it is possible to treat patients having panic disorder with or without mild agoraphobia in a brief, four-session format without losing clinical efficacy. Ten patients fulfilling the DSM-III-R criteria for this disorder received cognitive-behaviour therapy based on the Clark (1989) treatment, but reduced from 12 to 4 sessions (1 hour a week for four weeks). The reduction was achieved by focusing only on the patients' core misinterpretation of bodily sensations and adding extensive homework compared to the original treatment. Patients were assessed pre- and post-treatment and at a 6-month follow-up with assessor ratings of anxiety and depression, self-observation of panic attacks and self-report measures of panic attacks, agoraphobia, general anxiety, agoraphobic cognitions, anxiety sensitivity and depression. The results show that the patients improved significantly on all measures and that this improvement was maintained at the follow-up. On four measures there was even further significant improvement from post-treatment to follow-up. Seventy percent of the patients were panic-free at post-treatment and 90% were panic-free at follow-up.