2366 – Booster sessions after cognitive-behavioral group therapy for panic disorder: impact on resilience, coping and quality of life

Abstract

Panic Disorder (PD) tends to chronicity and one of the risk factors is the use of maladaptive coping strategies to deal with stressful events. To evaluate the response to booster sessions with cognitive techniques of coping strategies on resilience and on quality of life (QoL) of patients who received standard cognitive-behavioral group therapy (CBGT) for PD. A controlled clinical trial with 44 patients with PD (intervention= 20 and control= 24) who previously completed the 12-week CBGT protocol. PD, anxiety, and depression severity symptoms were assessed at baseline and 1, 6 and 12 months after the booster sessions. Coping strategies, resilience and QoL were assessed by Coping Strategies Inventory (CSI), Resilience Scale and WHOQOL-BREF, respectively. Considering the outcome ‘time,’ a significant improvement of PD and depression symptoms was observed in both groups. A significant increase in QoL domain of social relations for the intervention group was found, considering a time*group interaction. There was no significant difference on coping and other QoL domains. Changes on resilience were dependent on the symptoms intensity, and the correlations were negative. The improvement of PD and depression symptoms for both groups may be related to the therapeutic factors of the group sessions format. Therefore, booster sessions with groups after CBGT may benefit patients with PD regardless the use of specific cognitive techniques.