Faculty Articles
Specificity of Treatment Effects: Cognitive Therapy and Relaxation for Generalized Anxiety and Panic Disorders
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
ISSN
0022-006X
Publication Date
8-2007
Abstract
The aim of this study was to address claims that among bona fide treatments no one is more efficacious than another by comparing the relative efficacy of cognitive therapy (CT) and relaxation therapy (RT) in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic disorder without agoraphobia (PD). Two fixed-effects meta-analyses were conducted, for GAD and PD separately, to review the treatment outcome literature directly comparing CT with RT in the treatment of those disorders. For GAD, CT and RT were equivalent. For PD, CT, which included interoceptive exposure, outperformed RT on all panic-related measures, as well as on indices of clinically significant change. There is ample evidence that both CT and RT qualify as bona fide treatments for GAD and PD, for which they are efficacious and intended to be so. Therefore, the finding that CT and RT do not differ in the treatment of GAD, but do for PD, is evidence for the specificity of treatment to disorder, even for 2 treatments within a CBT class, and 2 disorders within an anxiety class.
DOI
10.1037/0022-006X.75.4.513
Volume
75
Issue
4
First Page
513
Last Page
522
NSUWorks Citation
Siev, J.,
Chambless, D. L.
(2007). Specificity of Treatment Effects: Cognitive Therapy and Relaxation for Generalized Anxiety and Panic Disorders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75(4), 513-522.
Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_facarticles/433
