Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Panic (Fifth Edition): Therapist Guide

Panic attacks and agoraphobia are extremely common. Around 30% of people have experienced a panic attack in the past year, and between 5% and 9% of people experience panic disorder and/or agoraphobia at some point in their life. Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Panic is a comprehensive program to assist clinicians in delivering effective CBT for panic and agoraphobia. The program includes two books:

• Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic: Therapist Guide details the step-by-step cognitive behavioural treatment of panic disorder and agoraphobia.
• Mastery of Your Anxiety And Panic: Workbook is the companion to this therapist guide. It will help your patients to become active participants in their treatment and to learn to manage panic attacks, anxiety about panic, and avoidance of panic and agoraphobic situations.

About Treatments That Work®

Authored by leading psychologists including David Barlow, Michelle Craske and Edna Foa, Treatments That Work® is a series of manuals and workbooks based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Each pair of books – therapist guide and workbook – contains step by step procedures for delivering evidence-based psychological interventions and will help you to provide the best possible care for your clients. 

At Psychology Tools, we are proud to make many of the Treatments That Work® titles available to our members. Each book is available to download chapter-by-chapter, and Psychology Tools members with a currently active subscription to our ‘Complete’ plan are licensed to share copies with their clients.

How effective is this treatment?

Grounded in David Clark’s 1986 model of panic disorder, cognitive-behavioral treatments are recommended as first-line treatments for panic and agoraphobia by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). A recent comprehensive review of the evidence (Craske, Wolitzky-Taylor, & Barlow, 2021), found that panic control therapy (PCT) yields panic-free rates in the range of 70% to 80% and high end-state rates (i.e., within normative ranges of functioning) in the range of 50% to 70%. Results generally maintain over follow-up intervals for as long as 2 years, particularly with occasional booster sessions (Craske et al., 1991; White et al., 2013).

Chapters in Mastery Of Your Anxiety And Panic: Therapist Guide

• Chapter 1: Introductory Information for Therapists
• Chapter 2: The Nature of Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia
• Chapter 3: Outline of Treatment Procedures and Basic Principles Underlying Treatment
• Chapter 4: Introduction to the Program
• Chapter 5: Learning to Record Panic and Anxiety
• Chapter 6: Negative Cycles of Panic and Agoraphobia
• Chapter 7: Panic Attacks Are Not Harmful
• Chapter 8: Establishing a Hierarchy of Agoraphobia Situations
• Chapter 9: Breathing Skills
• Chapter 10: Thinking Skills
• Chapter 11: Facing Physical Symptoms
• Chapter 12: Facing Agoraphobia Situations
• Chapter 13: Involving Others
• Chapter 14: Medications
• Chapter 15: Accomplishments, Maintenance, and Relapse Prevention
• Chapter 16: Therapist Guide for Brief Six-Session Version for Primary Care and Related Settings
• Appendix: Assessments for Panic Disorder
• References

About the authors

At the University of California, Los Angeles, Michelle G. Craske is Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Biobehavioral Sciences, Miller Endowed Chair, Director of the Anxiety and Depression Research Center, and Associate Director of the Staglin Family Music Center for Behavioral and Brain Health. She has published extensively in the area of fear, anxiety, and depression, including over 540 peer-reviewed journal articles as well as books on the topics of the etiology and treatment of anxiety disorders, translation from the basic science of fear learning to the clinical application of understanding and treating phobias, and cognitive behavioral therapy. She is Editor-in-Chief for Behaviour Research and Therapy. Dr. Craske received her BA Hons from the University of Tasmania and her PhD from the University of British Columbia.

David H. Barlow received his PhD from the University of Vermont in 1969, and has published over 650 articles and chapters as well as over 90 books and clinical manuals, mostly in the area of the nature and treatment of emotional disorders and clinical research methodology. Currently, he is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Emeritus, and Founder of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University. He was formerly Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Brown University. He was also Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Dr. Barlow is the recipient of the two highest awards in psychology, the American Psychological Association (APA) Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science honoring individuals for their lifetime of significant intellectual achievements in applied psychological research.

Each Treatments That Work® title is published as part of a pair:

• Clients use the Workbooks which contain elements of psychoeducation, skills development, self-assessment quizzes, homework exercises, and record forms.
• Therapists use the Therapist Guides which contain step-by-step instructions for teaching clients skills and overcoming common difficulties.

Although written for the client, the exercises in the workbook are intended to be carried out under the supervision of a mental health professional. The authors suggest that the most effective implementation of these exercises requires an understanding of the principles underlying the different procedures, and that mental health professionals should be familiar with both the Mastery of Your Anxiety And Panic: Workbook, as well as this guide. 

Therapists with an active subscription to a Psychology Tools ‘Complete’ plan are licensed to use Treatments That Work® titles, and to download and share chapters with their clients.

• American Psychiatric Association. Practice guideline for the treatment of patients with panic disorder [2009]. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.ed https://psychiatryonline.org/pb/assets/raw/sitewide/practice_guidelines/guidelines/panicdisorder.pdf.
• Clark, D. M. (1986). A cognitive approach to panic. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 24(4), 461-470.
• Craske, M. G., Brown, T. A., & Barlow, D. H. (1991). Behavioral treatment of panic disorder: A two-year follow-up. Behavior Therapy, 22, 289–304.
• Craske, M. G., Wolitzky-Taylor, K., & Barlow, D. H. (2021). Panic disorder and agoraphobia. In D. H. Barlow (Ed.), Clinical handbook of psychological disorders (6th ed.). Guilford Press.
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2020). Generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder in adults: management[CG113]. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg113
• White, K. S., Payne, L. A., Gorman, J. M., Shear, M. K., Woods, S. W., Saksa, J. R., & Barlow, D. H. (2013). Does maintenance CBT con- tribute to long-term treatment response of panic disorder with or without agoraphobia? A randomized controlled clinical trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81(1), 47–57.