Attributed to everything from a shock experienced in utero to a disharmony of vital bodily humors, anxiety disorders have been known, through the ages, by a variety of colorful and bizarre names. Treatment strategies, too, have ranged from the strange to the outright fatal. While this century has seen enormous progress in our understanding of the origins of clinical anxiety as well as in our ability to treat it, there is yet no consensus as to its causes and cures.

Anxiety and Related Disorders offers mental health practitioners a unique opportunity to acquaint themselves with and benefit from virtually all contemporary theories of and therapies for anxiety and related disorders. Over the course of twenty-one chapters, distinguished representatives from most major schools of thought offer their approaches to and insights into etiology, dynamics, symptomatology, diagnosis, treatment strategies, and more.

Divided into three parts, Part One of the book is devoted to the latest theories and conceptual systems. It begins with an oveview of anxiety and covers the psychoanalytic, behavioral, existential, and cognitive theories, as well as the experience of time in anxiety states. Also, two chapters in this part deal with genetic and biochemical etiological factors.

Part Two is concerned with symptomatology related to anxiety states. Taking a nontraditional approach, the authors analyze phobias, obsessive compulsive disorders, and anxiety states in childhood, old age, and as a result of posttraumatic stress. Part Three is geared specifically to the needs of clinicians. It deals extensively with diagnostic methods and describes various treatment approaches including pharmacotherapy, as well as behavioral, cognitive, interactional, and psychoanalytic therapies.

Encyclopedic in scope and offering a balanced, unbiased, extremely detailed presentation of the latest theories of and therapies for anxiety disorders, Anxiety and Related Disorders is an essential tool for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and all mental health practitioners. At the same time, it offers students at the graduate level a thoroughgoing survey of the full range of theoretical approaches and treatment options currently in use.