David D. Burns M.D. - When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life

Few truly great books on psychotherapy have been published, and this is one of them. When Panic Attacks tells you how to deal with all kinds of anxiety and with most other emotional problems. It is clearly and charmingly written.

Albert Ellis, Ph.D., founder of the Albert Ellis
Institute and bestselling author of A Guide to
Rational Living

Another masterpiece from the author who helped millions help themselves with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Dr. Burnss elegant writing style, compassion, and humor translate powerful psychotherapy methods into accessible, practical, and helpful tools for the vast number of individuals who struggle with anxiety.

Henny Westra, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director
of the York University Anxiety Research Clinic

Dr. Burns has a truly unique and remarkable ability to present the most current evidence-based therapies for anxiety in a way that is engaging, compelling, easy to read, andmost important of alluseful. Readers will be able to make immediate practical use of the concepts and strategies Dr. Burns presents here. Im sure this book will change many lives.

Jacqueline B. Persons, Ph.D., Director of the San
Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy and
Associate Clinical Professor at the University of
California, Berkeley

Besides being well written and accessible, with lots of patient narratives to spark interest, When Panic Attacks lays out exactly what readers need to do to feel better.

Library Journal

Also by David D. Burns, M.D.

Feeling Good: The New

Mood Therapy

Intimate Connections

The Feeling Good Handbook

Ten Days to Self-Esteem

Ten Days to Self-Esteem:

The Leaders Manual

Copyright 2006 by David Burns

All Rights Reserved

A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 2006 by
Morgan Road Books.

Published in the United Sta tes by Morgan Road Books, an imprint of The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.morganroadbooks.com

MORGAN ROAD BOOKS and the M colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burns, David D.
When panic attacks : the new, drug-free anxiety therapy that can change your life / by David D. Burns.
p. cm.
1. Panic attacksTreatment. 2. Panic attacksAlternative treatment.
I. Title.
RC535.B87 2006
616.8522306dc22
2005052260

eISBN: 978-0-7679-2389-7

v3.1_r3

T he ideas and techniques in this book are not intended as a substitute for consultation or treatment with a qualified mental health professional. The names and identities of the people in this book have been disguised to such an extensive degree that any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Most of the cases represent composites of many patients with similar problems. Ive done this to protect patient confidentiality. However, Ive also attempted to preserve the spirit of the work we did together. I hope these stories ring true and resonate with your own personal experience.

I would like to thank my daughter, Signe Burns, for her enormous contributions to the creation of this book. Without Signes brilliant editing and spirit, this book would have been radically different. We worked on it together for over a yeara joyous but sometimes humbling experience, because Signes feedback was always ruthlessly honest. We had tons of fun and spent lots of time giggling uncontrollably just about the time our brains were starting to turn to mush toward the end of the day.

I also want to thank Amy Hertz for giving me the chance to write this book and to work with her new publishing imprint, Morgan Road Books. Ive been knee-deep in academic research and clinical teaching at Stanford for more than ten years, and there have been many new developments in the treatment of anxiety and depression that Ive wanted to share with my colleagues and with the general public. Im especially grateful to Marc Haeringer, associate editor at Morgan Road Books, for his fabulous editing and collaboration in the creation of this manuscript.

I would also like to acknowledge many gifted colleagues whose creativity and innovation have contributed so greatly to the development and validation of the methods in this book. Of course, Drs. Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck were two of the earliest pioneers, but its really been a team effort. Thousands of gifted clinicians and researchers worldwide have worked together to put Cognitive Behavior Therapy on the map.

Finally, I want to thank the psychiatric residents at Stanford University School of Medicine who have attended my Wednesday evening psychotherapy seminars over the past several years. This has been a dynamic personal and professional experience for me, and while Ive been the teacher, Ive also been the student. Ive learned tremendously from all of you every single week. Your enthusiasm, compassion, and zeal have been an incredible gift!

D o self-help books actually help anyone? During the past fifteen years, Dr. Forrest Scogin and his colleagues from the University of Alabama Medical Center have conducted a series of innovative experiments designed to answer this question. The researchers randomly divided sixty patients seeking treatment for episodes of major depression into two groups. They told both groups of patients that theyd have to wait four weeks to see a psychiatrist. In the meantime, they gave each patient in one group a copy of my first book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, and encouraged them to read it during the waiting period. The patients in the second group did not receive the book. A research assistant called all the patients each week and administered two widely used tests that can track changes in depression.

The researchers were surprised by the results of their study. At the end of the four-week waiting period, two-thirds of the patients who read Feeling Good had improved substantially or recovered, even though they did not receive any medications or psychotherapy. In fact, they improved so much that they didnt need any additional treatment.

In contrast, the patients who did not receive Feeling Good failed to improve. The researchers then gave them a copy of Feeling Good and asked them to read it during a second four-week waiting period. Two-thirds of them recovered and did not require any additional treatment. Furthermore, the patients who responded to Feeling Good have not relapsed, but have maintained their gains for up to three years so far.

These were not fly-by-night studies, but peer-refereed studies published in top psychological and medical journals. The researchers concluded that