Agoraphobia: a multimodal treatment approach

A female patient with agoraphobia is presented to demonstrate the need for maximal flexibility in designing a treatment program for the agoraphobic patient. This patient required a multimodal approach utilizing pharmacotherapy, marital psychotherapy, and individual psychotherapy, alone and in combination. The paper looks specifically at nodal decision points in treatment at which reassessment was necessary and changes in psychotherapeutic intervention were made. The importance and implications of involving the patient's significant other in treatment are explored with respect to the outcomes such involvement may have on the treatment. A review of the literature on treatments for agoraphobia highlights the conclusion reached, that the agoraphobic patient presents with a biopsychosocial problem which frequently requires the clinician to combine several treatment modalities.