Question

Individuals with severe anxiety disorders may find many aspects of their lives adversely impacted. Adele experiences panic disorder that affects her career. Howie Mandel's obsessive compulsive disorder has affected his personal life and professional life. Both pharmacological and psychological treatments are helpful in treating anxiety disorders such as these, but research indicates that they may sometimes interact. Which do you think is more effective – combining drug and therapeutic treatments, or therapeutic treatment alone? Provide examples of specific treatments based on your text and justify your response with at least one outside source.

Answer 1

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders which can be treated with pharmacotherapy and various psychological therapies, especially CBT which is of utmost evidence in treating anxiety disorders.

The first-line drugs are serotonin-norepinephrine and serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. For routine use, benzodiazepines are not recommended.

The other treatment options available are tricyclic antidepressants, buspirone, and pregabalin. Thus, when developing the treatment plan, adverse effects, costs, and preferences of the patient should be given proper monitoring.

Concerning psychological therapies, CBT has been evident in treating anxiety disorders in various control studies.

For example- If there is the avoidance of fearful situations in phobic disorders, exposure techniques can be used in the treatment plan so that the patients will be able to face fearful situations. However, compared to CBT, the evidence for psychotherapy is relatively weaker.

Pharmacotherapy in combination with psychological therapy is effective. A meta-analysis, which was based on 35000 schizophrenia patients, medications were correlated with high- average effect size than psychotherapies. Patients who were part of psychotherapy studies were less ill than those who were recruited for medication trials. Moreover, it was also revealed that the average pre-post effect sizes for pill placebo conditions were found to be similar in strength in comparison to psychotherapies. Also, it was observed that the combination of both can result in high effect size(Bandelow & Wedekind, 2017).

Reference-

Bandelow, B., & Wedekind, D. (2017). Treatment of anxiety disorders. Retrieved 24 January 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5573566/