2 Ways to Treat Panic Attack
Two of the most employed are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and/or anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (or cognitive behavior therapy, CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to influence problematic and dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure.
This is the widely accepted and effective form of psychotherapy to treat panic attack.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (or cognitive behavior therapy, CBT) aids sufferers by helping them recognize and minimize the irrational thoughts and behaviors that reinforce panic symptoms.
Behavioral procedures that are often used to abate anxiety include relaxation techniques and at the same time being gradually exposed more and more to situations that may have previously caused anxiety in the sufferer.
In terms of medications, the Food and Drug Administration has approved particular members of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and the benzodiazepine families of medications to treat panic attack.
SSRIs are the most widely recommended antidepressants in many countries.
Research shows that to treat panic attack, the psychotherapy aspect of treatment is considered just as important as medication treatment.
In fact, psychotherapy alone or the combination of medication and psychotherapy treatment yields more successful results than medication alone.
Often, a combination of psychotherapy and medications produces good results.
In about two to three months, improvement can usually be observed.
However effective, the two methods are not without critics.
Those who uphold the alternative ways of treating panic attack claim that cognitive-behavioral therapy may help, but it does not really cure the problem.
The patient may need to see the therapist many times.
And if treatment is not initially successful, the patient could grow even more anxious about the implications of an attack, such as losing sanity, and may start to limit his day-to-day activities and therefore stop attending his or her therapy sessions.
Supporters of the alternative panic attack treatments also assert that using psychotropic drugs do not really address the core of the problem.
Many of these drugs only produce temporary benefits.
A lot of research now shows that there is a specific, unique reason that may actually trigger panic attacks in patients.
A person needs to deal with this trigger in order to ease his or her anxiety.
Being a unique trigger, there should also be a unique treatment for it.
So, apparently, treatment may vary from person in person.
A person must find what works from them.