Acute treatment response in outpatients with panic disorder: high versus low depressive symptoms

The authors studied 75 outpatients with DSM-III-R panic disorder who had participated in a clinical trial and had been randomly assigned to receive fluvoxamine, cognitive therapy, or placebo for an 8-week period. They compared a group with high levels of depressive symptoms and a group with low levels of depressive symptoms. At baseline, patients with high levels of depressive symptoms were more likely to have severe phobic avoidance and to have higher scores on measures of anxiety, hyochondriasis, and disability. An important finding was that depressive symptoms improved at a rate which paralleled improvement in panic and anxiety. Likewise, the presence of depressive symptoms did not interfere with treatment response in panic disorder. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.