Modern treatment modalities in anxiety

Developments in the medical management of anxiety tend, over the last two decades, to have clustered around modifications to the early benzodiazepines. These developments have given the psychiatrist a wide range of options in terms of intensity and duration of action but have carried with them the range of penalties associated with the benzodiazepines as a group. These include among others addiction potential and a sometimes inappropriate level of sedation. The need has been for a new drug, unrelated to the benzodiazepines and which is more specifically orientated towards anxiety. Buspirone, it seems, may well be such a drug. This paper discusses the anxiety disorders, the drug management of anxiety, the problems associated with traditional anxiolytics and the recent availability of a new class of drug in this indication.