As reported on WebMD,
A 12-week course of talk therapy may help curb the often debilitating symptoms of panic disorder -- including intense fear, chest pain, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath.
The new findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York City and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
The psychodynamic psychotherapy regimen used in the study was so successful that the American Psychiatric Association is in the process of changing its guidelines to reflect the new findings, according to researcher Barbara Milrod, MD. Milrod is an associate attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and an associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
Now, so far as I know, it is not really big news that therapy is effective for panic and other anxiety disorders. That has been shown for many years. What makes this report remarkable is that the therapy employed in the study was NOT cognitive behavioral therapy, but good old fashioned, much maligned psychodynamic psychotherapy!
The twice-weekly sessions are focused on the symptoms of panic disorder as well as garnering insight about the various unconscious factors that may have caused the panic disorder to develop in the first place. Such focus on the unconscious is the basic underpinning of psychoanalysis.
In the new study of 49 people with panic disorder, more than 70% of those in the talk therapy group showed significantly less anxiety and other panic symptoms as measured by a standard scale assessing panic symptoms. By contrast, just 39% of those participants who received applied relaxation training showed an improvement in their symptoms.