Psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy of anxiety disorders

Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in the general population, their course of illness is often chronic with many relapses, and is associated with a pronounced psychiatric comorbidity and psychosocial disability. Therefore, anxiety disorders are a major challenge to any mental health delivery system. From a perspective of treatment both differential psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions can be outlined which are well based in empirical terms. In psychiatric care biological and psychological approaches are often combined although the empirical basement of combined treatments still requires further validation.