Anxiety in Clinical Practice

The recognition and management of anxiety, and its relationship to other disorders, is a subject of growing importance in clinical practice. When added to clinical disease, anxiety can increase the handicap, complicate the presentation and retard healing. It can also cause behavioural problems which lead not only to physical damage but which also result in failure of social and personal relationships. Traditionally, doctors have responded to patients' anxiety by prescribing sedative drugs which, whilst having certain uses, do not provide a solution to anxiety. This book gives information on current developments in the theory and management of anxiety with an emphasis on the principles of psychotherapeutic management, including new self-help techniques which do not require professional input. The authors maintain that it is these techniques which must now be more fully developed and applied if the problem of morbid anxiety is to be solved on a wide scale. The text is essentially practical in approach.