Abstract
Abstract Despite an emerging body of research that reveals many similarities between nonclinical and clinical panickers, little research has examined theoretically relevant parameters of panic, fear, and avoidance among nonclinical panickers. Accordingly, the present investigation administered the Panic Attack Questionnaire to 188 college students who also completed an extensive battery to assess anxiety sensitivity, fear-of-fear cognitions, self-focused and body-focused attentional dispositions, coping strategies, trait anxiety, and depression. Conservative DSM-III-R panic criteria produced 26.6% past-year panickers and 13.8% past-month panickers. Substantial panic phenomenology similarities were evident between these nonclinical panickers and other studies' samples of clinical and nonclinical panickers. Relative to nonpanickers, panickers reported higher levels of anxiety sensitivity, fear-of-fear cognitions, trait anxiety, depression, and emotion-oriented coping, as well as body-focused (but not generally self-focused) attention. Results are considered in the contexts of a continuity perspective on panic and its biopsyhosocial mediation.
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