Panic Attack Treatment
A panic attack is probably one of the most terrifying things you’ll ever experience in your life and, if you have them, then you’ll realize the need for panic attack treatment. The best thing to do is always to seek professional help as an expert in the field of mental health will be able to diagnose your individual case and suggest what you should do. However, it’s always good to know the options that are open to you.
The main aim of any treatment is to reduce the severity and the amount of attacks a patient may suffer. Nowadays, there are two main methods of treatment: therapy and medication. Your doctor may prescribe either of these, or a combination of both, so it’s worth finding out what both entail.
Therapy
Therapies are becoming more and more popular as results are proving extremely good. The most productive therapy for panic attacks seems to be cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) where about 80-85% of patients report an improvement within eight sessions.
In each weekly session, the patient talks to the therapist about how they react during an attack and what they actually think about. Once all negative thoughts and beliefs have been identified, then you both try and replace them with more positive and balanced reactions. That’s the cognitive bit of the therapy; the next part teaches you how to change your behavior so you can cope with any panic attacks in the future. As well as breathing techniques and ways of calming yourself down, it also exposes you to your main fears and shows you they can be overcome. In this way, it’s very like the therapy someone may go to for fear of flying – they are exposed to the sensation of flying and are made to feel it’s not so bad after all.
Medication
There are several types of medicine which may be prescribed for panic attack treatment. The main ones are benzodiazepines, antidepressants and a new type of drug called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). All of these try to block the panic attacks so patients no longer anticipate the arrival of an attack and therefore can more easily overcome their fears.
It may seem strange that antidepressants are used to treat panic attacks as, from their very name, they are associated with patients who suffer from depression but research has shown that they can help prevent panic attacks in almost half of all cases. It must be remembered though, that all this medication is not a long term cure for panic attacks and the side effects as well as the withdrawal symptoms can be quite overwhelming. Take the SSRI’s for example, which incidentally are another type of antidepressant – Prozac probably being the most famous. These have a very good success rate with around 75-80% of patients improving as the level of serotonin is increased in their bodies but the side effects such as nausea, low sex drive, blurred vision etc can be quite grueling and demoralizing. And again these should not be taken for a long period of time, in fact you have to be closely monitored by your doctor to check that everything is O.K. the whole time you take them.
Overall, medication may seem the easier and quicker way out of experiencing panic attacks but it is always worth considering all the options open to you. Therapy could prove to the better long term treatment as it tries to change a patient’s basic approach to panic and it doesn’t have any of the side effects.
