Panic Disorder — Overlap with Symptoms of Somatization Disorder

Abstract

Panic disorder shows a highly characteristic profile of symptoms that can be described on several different levels. These include the behavioral — the phobic avoidance of certain external situations of chronic patients, or the active, help-seeking behavior of acutely anxious patients; the emotional — the prototypic ‘intense apprehension, fear or terror’ of the acute attack; and the somatic — a multitude of autonomic and somatic symptoms. It is the latter feature that usually distinguishes best between panic disorder patients and patients with generalized anxiety disorder (Hoehn-Saric 1981, 1982; Anderson etal. 1984). The behavioral aspects of panic disorder and agoraphobia have been well investigated (Mathews etal. 1981; Thorpe and Burns 1983) and a number of studies of the cognitive and emotional aspects have recently been undertaken (Butler and Mathews 1983; Hibbert 1984; Mathews and MacLeod 1985). The somatic complaints that are central to most patients’ experience of panic (Katon 1984), however, have only been superficially studied. It is this visceral aspect of panic disorder that we wish to explore in this work.