Effective therapy isn’t a one-size-fits-all treatment. Different conditions require different approaches. Available therapeutic options include:
psychotherapy
in either a one-on-one or a group setting, patients spend time talking with therapists to identify fears, define goals, and strengthen interpersonal relationships. Cognitive behavioral therapy
also known as cbt, this combines talk therapy and behavioral therapy to change dysfunctional thinking and develop problem-solving strategies. Medication
sometimes, medication can help ease the symptoms of anxiety and depression to help you gain stability. Medication can be a short-term or a long-term solution, depending on what you and your therapist decide.
Exposure Treatment for Anxiety
Over a quarter of the people in the us population will have an anxiety disorder sometime during their lifetime. 1 it is well established that exposure-based behavior therapies are effective treatments for these disorders; unfortunately, only a small percentage of patients are treated with exposure therapy.
2,3 for example, in the harvard/brown anxiety research project, only 23% of treated patients reported receiving even occasional imaginal exposure and only 19% had received even occasional in vivo exposure. 4 in part, this may be a lack of well-trained professionals, because most mental health clinicians do not receive specialized training in exposure-based therapies.
Behaviour therapy for anxiety relies mainly on a treatment called 'graded exposure'. If you avoid situations that make you anxious you don’t get a chance to face your fear and prove to yourself you can manage it.
one year after treatment, hai scores were 2. 97 points lower in the cognitive behavioural therapy for health anxiety (cbt-ha) group (95% confidence interval [ci] 1. 57 to 4. 37). Scores had reduced by an average 6. 44 points for cbt recipients compared with 3. 20 for the standard care group. Cbt-ha gave a maximal benefit at six months (7. 11 score reduction vs 2. 33 with standard care), but improvements were maintained to five years (between-group difference 2. 20 points, 95% 0. 70 to 3. 70). Subgroup analysis by condition showed that cbt-ha gave significant improvements among patients seen in cardiology clinics only (between-group difference 5.