Clomipramine and diazepam in the treatment of agoraphobia and social phobia in general practice

Summary

A multi-centre, double-blind trial was carried out in general practice to compare the effectiveness and tolerability of clomipramine and diazepam in patients with agoraphobia or social phobia. Patients were allocated at random to receive one or other of the trial drugs over a period of 12 weeks and dosage was adjusted to need. During the last 4 weeks daily dosage ranged from 25 to 150 mg clomipramine and from 10 to 30 mg diazepam. Analysis of results from 33 patients (15 clomipramine, 18 diazepam) showed that clomipramine was significantly superior to diazepam in improving and maintaining improvement in situational anxiety, interference in lifestyle, accompanied travel distance and total score on an agoraphobia inventory. Tolerability of clomipramine was comparable to that of diazepam.

Key Words::

• Clomipramine
• diazepam
• phobias