A comparison of cognitive and guided mastery therapy of agoraphobia

The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of cognitive and performance-based therapy of agoraphobia. Fifty-two patients suffering from panic disorder with moderate or severe agoraphobia and considering agoraphobia as their main problem were randomly assigned to receive either cognitive therapy or guided mastery therapy in a six-week inpatient group program. Significantly more of the cognitive therapy patients attained high endstate functioning, whereas the proportion of responders in the two groups did not differ. An overall test revealed no differences between the two treatment groups on the continuous outcome measures at posttreatment. As predicted from the cognitive model of panic with agoraphobia, self-efficacy scores increased with the reduction of catastrophic belief scores in the cognitive therapy group. Inconsistent with the self-efficacy model, catastrophic belief scores did not change with the increase of self-efficacy scores in the guided mastery group. Overall, the superiority of one of the treatment methods over the other was not clearly demonstrated.