Psychosocial treatment of phobia and panic disorders.

Intervention packages combining cognitive restructuring techniques and exposure exercises have become the psychosocial treatments of choice for panic, agoraphobia, and social phobia. Exposure and related desensitization techniques are the treatment of choice for all variants of simple phobia. Combining psychotropic medication and cognitive-behavior therapy suggests strategies that offer new opportunities for increasing the number of individuals with anxiety disorders who can be effectively treated with a biobehavioral approach.