Levels Of Phobic Anxiety Research Articles

Personality, Levels of Psychological Distress and Premature Termination of Psychodynamic Group Therapy: Results from a Prospective Longitudinal Study

This study investigated personality factors and type of psychological distress associated with an increased risk of premature termination of psychodynamic group therapy. Data was part of a larger ongoing longitudinal project. Subjects who had completed the group therapy (n = 53) were compared to subjects who had terminated the therapy prematurely (n = 41) with respect to their pre-therapy personality profiles (as measured with KAPP) and self-reported symptoms (as measured with the SCL–90). Overall, differences between the groups were modest but subjects that dropped out of therapy showed more difficulties with handling frustration, had a more distorted body image, felt more needed and reported higher levels of phobic anxiety.

Prospective study of phobic anxiety and risk of coronary heart disease in men.

To examine prospectively the association between self-reported symptoms of phobic anxiety and subsequent risk of coronary heart disease, a 2-year follow-up study was conducted of a cohort of 33,999 US male health professionals, aged 42 to 77 years in 1988, who were free of diagnosed cardiovascular disease at baseline. Levels of phobic anxiety were assessed using the Crown-Crisp index, a short, diagnostic self-rating scale used for common phobias. Main outcomes were incidents of coronary heart disease consisting of nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) and fatal coronary heart disease (CHD). One hundred sixty-eight incident cases of CHD occurred during 2 years of follow-up (128 cases of nonfatal MI and 40 cases of fatal CHD). The age-adjusted relative risk of fatal CHD among men with highest levels of phobic anxiety (scoring 4 or higher on the Crown-Crisp index) was 3.01 (95% confidence interval, 1.31 to 6.90) compared with men with the lowest levels of anxiety (scoring 0 or 1 on the phobia index). Risk of fatal CHD increased with levels of phobic anxiety (P trend = .002). When fatal CHD was further categorized into sudden and nonsudden coronary death, the excess risk was confined to sudden death (relative risk among men scoring 3 or higher on the phobia index was 6.08; 95% confidence interval, 2.35 to 15.73). No association was found between phobic anxiety and risk of nonfatal MI. These findings remained essentially unchanged after adjusting for a broad range of cardiovascular risk factors. The specificity, strength, and dose-response gradient of the association, together with the consistency and biological plausibility of the experimental and epidemiologic evidence, support a strong causal association between phobic anxiety and fatal CHD.