2012/10/26 by Sanne M. Hendriks, Jan Spijker, Carmilla M.M. Licht +2 · 1 citation
Psychology · #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Personality Disorders and Psychopathology
paper · doi:10.1111/acps.12024
openalex publication_date 2012/10/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
OBJECTIVE: This study compares diagnostic and symptom course trajectories across different anxiety disorders, and examines the role of anxiety arousal vs. avoidance behaviour symptoms in course prediction. METHOD: Data were from 834 subjects with a current anxiety disorder from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA) who were re-interviewed after 2 years. DSM-IV-based diagnostic interviews and Life Chart Interviews (LCI) were used to assess the diagnostic and symptom course trajectory over 2 years. Anxiety arousal and avoidance behaviour symptoms were measured with LCI, Beck Anxiety Inventory and Fear Questionnaire. RESULTS: Prognosis varied across disorders, with favourable remittance rates of 72.5% for panic disorder without agoraphobia and 69.7% for generalized anxiety disorder; gradually declining to 53.5% for social phobia and 52.7% for panic disorder with agoraphobia. Only 42.9% of those with multiple anxiety disorder remitted, and this group showed a more chronic course than pure anxiety disorders. Both baseline duration and severity were course predictors. Avoidance behaviour symptoms predicted the outcome better than anxiety arousal symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that the specific anxiety disorders such as recognized by DSM-IV are useful in predicting the outcome and that this may be determined largely by the relative severity of avoidance behaviour that patients have developed.