Anxiety Disorders as Psychotherapy Research Assignment

Anxiety Disorders as Psychotherapy
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Anxiety Disorders as Psychotherapy
Several studies have been conducted to determine the effectiveness of psychotherapy in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders are high in the United Sates at 13.3% and are associated with low quality life, high treatments costs and high mortality rates in patients. Different psychotherapy and medical treatments for anxiety disorders are available and both have been established to be effective depending on the type of disorder that is being treated. For decades medication alone has been regarded as the only efficacious treatment method for these anxiety disorders. However, recent studies have proved that a combination of the two forms is more effective than the use of medications alone.
Anxiety disorders are being characterized by fear and absolute avoidance of objects or situations that pose no real danger. A combination of psychotherapy and medications is being considered as a gold in the treatment of these disorders and several studies about the efficacy of this approach has been published in the recent past. Some studies have been focusing on the efficacy of one treatment approach over the other while others on the efficacy of both. However, in diagnosing and treating anxiety disorders, it is important to understand how emotional, personal (core) beliefs and coping strategies interact to cause an anxiety disorder (Bystritsky, et al., 2013).
The “ABC” anxiety model plays an important role in helping psychiatrics to design the best treatment program for their patients. Alarms (A) are the emotions that trigger a situation that causes anxiety; beliefs (B) are the personal, cultural or past experiences that form the decisions a patient forms in response to the situation; and coping strategies (C) is how the patients reacts to help them reduced the tension (Bystritsky, et al., 2013). Over time this process evolves forming a complex anxiety disorder. In addition, for the psychiatrics and clinicians to treat anxiety disorders effectively, they need to understand how they emerge and what conditions maintain them.
Due to the availability of different types of anxiety disorders, not all the treatment approaches are effective to all types of these disorders. Some types are responsive to one approach over the other whereas others can respond to a combination of both approaches (Patel & Simpson, 2010). Since anxiety disorders are being caused by both psychological and biological factors, both methods are effective when combined together than when used separately.
Through the cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), patients are able to learn their thoughts causes the disorders and the techniques that they can use to reduce these symptoms. In addition to CBT, medications help in treating those biological factors that may have contributed to the development of these disorders (Crits-Christoph, et al., 2011).
Treatment of anxiety for patients is expensive and combining both approaches have proven to reduce these expenses for them. Since not all patients respond to the chosen approach, their clinicians are using, the clinicians may continue repeating the same approach without any improvements. This makes the patients to spend more money on their treatment something that my drive them into financial problems. Therefore, patients who do not respond to medications alone, an addition of psychotherapy to their treatment plan will help to improve patient outcomes and reduce the overall costs. The cost benefit in this approach is not measured through the costs of getting another form of treatment but also on the effectiveness of those additional treatments in reducing future healthcare utilization (Morin, et al., 2009). Patients who recover completely are not likely to seek or utilize medical resources to treat the same condition in the future as opposed to those who do not get full recovery due to the use of medications alone.
Additionally, the use of medication may make the patients dependent...