Treating Co-Morbid Panic Disorder and Substance Use Disorder

Abstract

(from the chapter) Despite the marked co-morbidity between substance use disorders (SUD) and panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PDA) in both clinical and community samples (e.g., Grant et al., 2004; Kushner, Abrams, & Borchardt, 2000; Toneatto, Negrete, & Calderwood, 2000), and the generally negative prognostic impact of such co-morbidity (e.g., Burns, Teesson, & O'Neill, 2005; Willinger, et al., 2002), the development of effective treatments has been slow. Due to conflicting treatment philosophies, non-integrated health-care systems, limitations in treatment providers' clinical training and skill, lack of validated conceptual models of co-morbidity, absence of valid assessment and diagnostic tools for co-morbid populations, and lack of resources (cf. Weiss, Najavits, & Hennessy, 2004), treatments for individuals presenting with concurrent PDA and SUDs continue to generally focus on either the anxiety disorder or the addictive disorder (i.e., sequential or parallel treatment) rather than targeting the concurrent disorders in an integrated approach. This chapter will briefly review the treatment literature specific to PDA and SUD, describe common methods of assessing these disorders, and outline a functional analytic approach to the assessment and treatment of the PDA-SUD relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)