Psychological Causal Factors of Panic Disorder

Panic disorder is characterised by the “out of the blue” panic attacks, which are recurrent, unexpected attacks and the person must be persistently concerned or worried about having another attack for at least a month. For an attack to meet the criteria of a full-blown episode, the person must have an abrupt onset of at least 4 of 13 symptoms given in DSM-V criteria. The panic episode peaks at 10 minutes, lasts for about 20 to 30 minutes maximum but not later than an hour. Panic attacks are often “unexpected “or “uncued”, in a way that they don’t seem to have an identifiable provocation of the immediate situation. 

Psychological causal factors of panic disorder include 10 physical symptoms and 3 cognitive, a total of 13 symptoms. A person must have at least 4 symptoms to meet the DSM criteria for panic attack. Following are the symptoms:

1. Palpitations, pounding heart or high heart rate.
2. Sweating 
3. Trembling or shaking
4. Sensations of shortness of breath
5. Feeling of choking
6. Nausea
7. Chest pain
8. Feeling dizzy or light-hearted
9. Chills or heat sensations
10. Parenthesias (numbness or tingling )
11. Derealization or depersonalization 
12. Loss of control over oneself
13. Fear of dying

There are many psychological causal factors of panic disorder, but the most important ones are  explained below:

• Cognitive Theory of Panic: The cognitive theory regarding panic was given by Beck and adapted by D.M. Clark, with the hypothesis that the people who suffer from panic attacks have a higher sensitivity to their bodily sensations. As it is a sign of their panic attack, they assign a worry to that bodily sensation along with the perceived threat of having another panic attack. This leads to more bodily sensations which are then interpreted as catastrophic threats, resulting into a vicious circle of having a panic attack. The model proposes that these catastrophic thoughts become automatic soon after first or second panic attack and escalate the condition. (Pilecki, 2011)
• Comprehensive Learning Theory of Panic: Learning theory argues that the person goes through two types of conditioning – interoceptive and exteroceptive. The initial attacks become related to the internal and external cues which actually condition them to anxiety. The more intense the anxiety, more robust the conditioning will occur. The exteroceptive and interoceptive conditioning can range from heart palpitations, dizziness to social places like shopping malls. Most of the time a panic attack is “out of the blue” but it is the internal cues that the person was unconsciously conditioned to generate anxiety. (Acheson, 2012)
• Anxiety Sensitivity and Perceived Control: Anxiety sensitivity means that some people have a tendency to notice certain bodily sensations with harmful consequences. These people are more prone to develop panic disorder. They say statements like “When I feel dizzy, I worry that I might faint”. In addition to this sensitivity, there is a term called perceived control which means that if there is an element of safety around a person who is suffering from panic disorder, the susceptibility of a panic attack becomes low. (Dixon, 2013) (Carleton, 2014)
• Safety Behaviours and Persistence of Panic: Some people may have a panic attack four or five times a week for 20 years, each time thinking that they might have a heart attack and yet they never do. They have these “safety behaviours” in response to their perceived threat of having a heart attack or going crazy. But when the threat does not become a harmful consequence, they do not have the ideal realisation and persistently worry about having a panic attack. (van Uijen, 2017) 
• Cognitive Biases and Maintenance of Panic: People with panic disorder have cognitive biases towards threatening circumstances or information. They process that threatening information a lot easily and quickly than the other types of information. They have a tendency to selectively attend to these threatening circumstances and retrieve such information from long term memory. This leads to an unconscious cue that automatically provoke the person to have another attack. 

These psychological causal factors of panic disorder have proven to be prevalent in people suffering with a panic disorder. They are cognitive schemas or a mental framework that is designed for such threats and the concept of having a panic attack, which makes the attacks come “out of the blue”. 

Orchestrate Health offers bespoke mental health services that people can access from the comfort of their own home or within their community, with rapid response times and even daily visits if needed. Orchestrate Health can provide help for those struggling with panic disorder, and remove the inconvenience of travelling to and from appointments.

References:

1. Dixon, L. J., Sy, J. T., Kemp, J. J., & Deacon, B. J. (2013). Does anxiety sensitivity cause panic symptoms? An experimental investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 4(2), 208-223. https://doi.org/10.5127%2Fjep.027512 
2. Pilecki, B., Arentoft, A., & McKay, D. (2011). An evidence-based causal model of panic disorder. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 25(3), 381-388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.10.013 
3. Carleton, R. N., Duranceau, S., Freeston, M. H., Boelen, P. A., McCabe, R. E., & Antony, M. M. (2014). “But it might be a heart attack”: intolerance of uncertainty and panic disorder symptoms. Journal of anxiety disorders, 28(5), 463-470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.04.006 
4. Acheson, D. T., Forsyth, J. P., & Moses, E. (2012). Interoceptive fear conditioning and panic disorder: the role of conditioned stimulus–unconditioned stimulus predictability. Behavior therapy, 43(1), 174-189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2011.06.001 
5. van Uijen, S., Dalmaijer, E., van den Hout, M., & Engelhard, I. (2017). DO SAFETY BEHAVIORS PRESERVE THREAT BELIEFS?. Safety behaviors and the persistence of irrational fears, 31. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/359550/vUijen.pdf?sequence=1#page=31h