What are the implications for treatment of comorbidity of panic disorder and addiction?
The first order of business for any clinician is to make the diagnosis. Given the high prevalence of panic disorder and addiction, as well as the importance of identifying comorbidity, it is important to make both diagnoses and not to let one stand as the only diagnosis when both exist in particular patients (DuPont, 1992). In the first instance, this means that clinicians should have a high index of suspicion about these disorders and, when one disorder is found, they should look for the other (just as clinicians need to look for comorbid depression when they make a diagnosis of either panic disorder or addiction) (Galanter &: Kleber, 1994). Two good ideas 1. Identify both disorders–panic disorder and addiction–when they are comorbid, and consider the full range of treatments for both diseases. It is seldom either helpful or accurate to consider either panic disorder or addiction to be secondary conditions (if the panic persists more than a few weeks once the patient is drug and alc