Short-term group therapy for patients with anxiety disorders in primary care

To improve the efficacy of primary care for patients with anxiety disorders, a short-term group therapy was developed to enable primary care doctors to foster self-help capacities in these patients. During the first two of altogether four group sessions, patients were given basic information about different anxiety disorders. Over the second two sessions cognitive coping strategies were taught and individualized advice was given how to carry out self-exposure exercises. The aim of the reported study was to evaluate the effectiveness of this short-term group therapy. 52 patients with six different anxiety disorders, classified by ICD-IO, including 30 agoraphobics, participated in the study. The patients with agoraphobia, simple phobia and social phobia reported a substantial reduction of anxiety and avoidance. More than 50% of these patients did not request any further psychotherapeutic support. The response among the patients with panic disorder, heart phobia and generalized anxiety was much worse, but patients with these diagnoses were only represented with a very small number. The authors suggest that a behaviorally oriented, short-term group therapy is an easy to install and effective way to improve the primary care of patients with anxiety disorders.