Cognitive Therapy and Research

, Volume 30, Issue 1, pp 53–68 | Cite as

A Test of Core Assumptions of the Catastrophic Misinterpretation Model of Panic Disorder

Article
First Online:

The catastrophic misinterpretation model of panic disorder proposes that spontaneous panic attacks are the result of misinterpretation of harmless autonomic arousal as precursors to physical (e.g. heart attack) or psychological (e.g. insanity) emergency. Mixed research findings to date have provided equivocal support. A modified form of the Body Sensations Interpretation Questionnaire was used to investigate core assumptions of the model amongst 38 people with panic disorder (PD), 20 with non-clinical panic, 21 with social anxiety disorder, and 34 non-anxious controls. The PD group gave more harm-related interpretations of ambiguous internal stimuli than all other groups only when anxiety-related responses (e.g. “I'm going to panic”) were scored as harm, however there was no evidence that anxiety-related interpretations were masking perceived catastrophic physical or psychological outcomes. Despite this, people with PD rated harm and anxiety outcomes as more negative than non-anxious controls. Results failed to unequivocally support core assumptions of the model.

KEY WORDS:

catastrophic misinterpretation panic disorder non-clinical panic social anxiety disorder  
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Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

David Austin would like to acknowledge the contribution of his greatly respected colleague and co-author Professor Jeff Richards who died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 5th April, 2005, prior to final acceptance of this manuscript.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health SciencesMonash UniversityVictoriaAustralia
  2. 2.Department of General PracticeMonash UniversityVictoriaAustralia

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