Therapists almost always treat panic attacks

Physicians inform about the treatment options for panic attacks
Panic attacks are a relatively widespread complaint that can be a significant burden in everyday life for those affected and sometimes has serious physical consequences. Physicians at the University Hospital Bonn therefore provide information about the treatment options and make it clear that most of those affected can definitely be helped.

When anxiety and panic attacks determine life, sufferers need help. Because "anxiety increasingly affects everyday life and reduces the quality of life," explains Privatdozent Dr. med. Rupert Conrad, senior physician and research director at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy in Bonn. Anxiety disorders are in themselves well treatable with psychotherapy, but this requires that those affected take the therapies too.

Many Germans suffer from anxiety disorders and panic attacks. However, these can be remedied relatively well therapeutically. (Image: pathdoc / fotolia.com)

Ten percent of Germans with an anxiety disorder
From an evolutionary point of view, fear, according to the Bonn researchers, ensures survival. Because it protects us from taking irresponsible risks in dangerous situations. Also, for example, a bit of stage fright can raise the attention in an exam. An estimated one in ten people in Germany, however, develop an anxiety disorder, the scientists continue.

Panic attacks lead to avoidance behavior
For example, anxiety disorders can be due to an excessive fear of spiders, injections, confined spaces and contact with people, or they may be the unfounded worry of possible calamities. Typically, the emotional state of panic attacks occurs repeatedly and unreasonably violent. Many sufferers therefore try to avoid the supposedly dangerous situations.

Behavior therapy especially helpful
According to the Bonn experts are anxiety disorders with psychotherapy easy to treat, but also the use of psychotropic drugs may be useful. Dr. Ingo Wegener, Senior Psychologist for Behavioral Therapy at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, emphasizes that "especially behavioral therapy, a special form of psychotherapy, has proven itself and has achieved very good success rates".

Different treatment approaches can be combined
In the case of behavioral therapy, those involved in voluntary exercises are confronted with the respective avoided fear triggers. Wegener Thus, the patients experience that the feared catastrophes do not occur at all, their avoidance behavior, which is usually associated with the fears, therefore unfounded, reports the expert. In the Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy of the University Hospital Bonn, the behavioral therapeutic methods are successfully combined, according to the medical profession with depth psychology approaches for the treatment of panic attacks. (Fp)