overload often keeps those who suffer most from seeking the help
they need.
By Jessie Milligan
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Monday,March 20, 2006
Edition: Tarrant, Section: Life & Arts, Page E1
She was anxious. Her heart rate increased. That frightened her, and the more scared she became,
the more her heart raced. Before long, she was running down the dark alleys of her own fears. That's
what it feels like inside the jagged edges of what we now know to be panic attacks, says Clark
Vinson, the therapist who eventually treated the Texas woman at the Arlington-based Phobia Center
of Dallas/Fort Worth.
But back then, 20 years ago, panic attacks weren't so well understood. The woman went through
64 electroshock treatments, and then sought Vinson's help.
"What we needed to do was treat her reaction to her own fear," Vinson says. Doctors,
therapists and the public have made great leaps in the understanding of panic attacks in the last two
decades.
Everybody's favorite mob boss, HBO's Tony Soprano, suffered from panic attacks. Willard
Scott has said he succumbed to them while readying his weather reports for the Today show. Nicole
Kidman has said she has been hit with them before stepping out on the red carpet.
About 2 percent to 5 percent of Americans will have repeated panic attacks throughout their
lives. Mental health specialists say that percentage is not increasing, and a study funded by the National
Institute of Mental Health, and released last year, showed not even the terrorist attacks of 2001
boosted the rate of the nation's anxiety disorders.
Yet despite celebrity confessions and public awareness, the same study found the average
sufferer waits 10 years before seeking help.
"Panic disorder is highly treatable," says Dr. Sanjay J. Mathew, an assistant professor of
psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Behavioral therapy and antidepressants
are the most common treatments.
Panic begins in the neurotransmitter systems of the brain, Mathew says. Some of those systems,
such as those that control adrenalin, are overactive. Others, such as the ones that work to slow down
fight-or-flight instincts, are underactive.
Panic disorders can be inherited, Mathew says.
That lends credence to the claims of New Kids on the Block stars Jonathan and Jordan Knight,
who told Oprah a few years back that they inherited their panic disorder from their father.
In the world of behavioral therapists, however, panic attacks begin and end not with brain
chemicals but with thoughts and actions.
Therapists say particular types of people are most prone to panic attacks. Perfectionists and
overachievers are more likely to have anxiety overflow.
