Symptom profiles of patients with DSM-III anxiety disorders.

The authors used symptom profiles, demographic data, and other variables to compare 316 patients representing all specific DSM-III anxiety disorders except posttraumatic stress disorder to each other and to published norms for both an unselected psychiatric outpatient population and normal subjects. The results support the grouping of these disorders, with the possible exception of obsessive-compulsive disorder, into one general diagnostic category of "anxiety disorders." The distinction between the specific diagnoses of simple phobia and social phobia was also supported; however, the differentiation between panic disorder, agoraphobia, and generalized anxiety was only weakly supported.