This informational handout provides a client-friendly overview of panic disorder and ways to address it.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Our ‘What Is … ?’ series is a collection of one-page information handouts for common mental health conditions. Friendly and explanatory, handouts in the series describe how it can feel to struggle with a difficulty and are reliable sources of information for your clients. Drawing upon established cognitive behavioral models, each handout has a particular focus on maintaining factors that might prevent the problem from getting better.
What Is Panic Disorder? is designed to help clients with panic attacks and panic disorder to understand more about their condition.
This resource is expertly designed to support clients by:
Designed to help clients affected by panic disorder and panic attacks.
Discuss the common symptoms of panic disorder.
Help the client understand how their symptoms fit together and make sense.
Explore what might be maintaining the client's difficulties.
Point out treatments that can be effective for addressing these issues.
A panic attack is a sudden surge of intense fear which is accompanied by strong body feelings (such as your heart beating rapidly, or finding it hard to breathe) and catastrophic thoughts (such as thinking that you will lose control or die). Panic attacks feel terrifying, but they are not dangerous. People who worry about their panic, and who take steps to try to prevent the possibility of having more, are said to suffer from panic disorder. It is thought that between 1 and 3 people out of every 100 will experience panic disorder every year and many more than that will have a panic attack at least once.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an extremely effective treatment for panic disorder: about 80% of people with panic disorder who complete a course of CBT are panic-free at the end of treatment.
The What Is Panic? information handout is designed to help clients with panic attacks and panic disorder understand more about their condition. It includes a summary of the most common symptoms of panic attacks and panic disorder, and insights into why panic disorder might not get better by itself, derived from the Clark (1986) cognitive model of panic.
