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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Collaborative care may help ease anxiety

Linda Searing The Washington Post

The question: Doctors and insurers are beginning to use a collaborative approach to caring for patients with chronic disorders: having someone who is not a doctor offer ongoing support by explaining the illness, discussing treatment options and monitoring progress, usually by phone. Might this approach be helpful to people with anxiety disorders?

This study randomly assigned 191 adults diagnosed with anxiety, including panic disorder, to collaborative or standard care. People in the collaborative care group spoke with their care manager, almost exclusively by phone, about once a month. For standard care, participants and their doctors merely were informed of the anxiety diagnosis. After a year, those with care managers had fewer symptoms of anxiety or depression, had gone to the emergency room less often and had missed work fewer times than those in standard care. They also reported greater improvement in their quality of life. The number of times participants visited their doctor was about the same for the two groups.

Who may be affected by these findings? Anyone with chronic anxiety, considered the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting more than 19 million adults each year.

Caveats: Participants were paid, up to $130 total, for time spent speaking with the study authors. People with alcohol-related anxiety disorders were excluded from the study.

Find this study: December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry; abstract available online at www.archgenpsychiatry.com.

Learn more about anxiety disorders at http://healthyminds.org and www.mentalhealth.samhsa.gov.