Help-seeking might be too difficult or fearful for people with panic symptoms, especially when they suffer from agoraphobia as well.
While PD can be effectively treated by cognitive behavioural therapy and pharmacotherapy, it is known that only 25% of people with anxiety symptoms seeks help and only 15% of people with panic symptoms receives effective treatment. Comorbid anxiety and depressive symptoms can lead to suicidal ideation and PD elevates the risk at suicide attempts when comorbid with a mood disorder, substance abuse or another anxiety disorder. Panic symptoms are often comorbid with other mental health problems, like depression or other anxiety disorders. Sub-clinical PD is a substantial burden for both the patient and society. It can be defined as panic symptoms that do not meet DSM-IV criteria for PD. Sub-clinical PD indicates infrequent panic attacks or frequent panic attacks that are relatively mild. A study among the population in the Netherlands shows PD affects 1.5% of all adults each year, while 2% of the population is affected by sub-clinical PD. One of those anxiety disorders is panic disorder (PD). Direct and indirect costs caused by anxiety disorders are estimated at half a billion dollars per 1 million adults per year.
#ONLINE USE CASE DIAGRAM GEREEDSCHAP TRIAL#
Netherlands Trial Register (NTR): NTR1639 The Netherlands Trial Register is part of the Dutch Cochrane Centre.Īnxiety disorders are highly prevalent, affecting one in six people during their lifetime, and cause a substantial loss of quality of life. Strengths of this design are the external validity and the fact that it is almost completely conducted online. Results will indicate the effectiveness of Internet based self-help for sub-clinical and mild PD. Assessments will take place on the Internet at baseline and three months after baseline. Secondary outcomes include depressive symptoms, quality of life, loss of production and health care consumption. Severity of panic and anxiety symptoms are the primary outcome measures. Participants with mild or sub-clinical PD (N = 128) will be recruited in the general population. This study is a randomised controlled trial aimed to evaluate an Internet based self-help intervention for sub-clinical and mild PD compared to a waiting list control group. Panic symptoms that do not meet DSM-IV criteria are more prevalent than the full-blown disorder and patients with sub-clinical panic symptoms are at risk of developing PD. However, studies so far have focussed on treating a full-blown disorder. Internet based self-help for panic disorder (PD) has proven to be effective.