A Guide To What Works For Anxiety Disorders - Mental Health First Aid

Relaxation trainingGADPTSD and ASDOur ratingPanic Disorder and AgoraphobiaSpecific PhobiasOur ratingSocial Phobia OCD?WHAT IS IT?There are several different types of relaxation training. The mostcommon one is progressive muscle relaxation. This teaches a personto relax by tensing and relaxing specific groups of muscles. Anothertype of relaxation training involves thinking of relaxing scenes or places.Relaxation training can be learned from a professional or done as selfhelp.Recorded instructions are available for free on the internet. Theycan also be bought on CDs.Specific PhobiasRelaxation training has been studied as a treatment for differentphobias. It is as effective as other behavioural and drug treatments fordental phobia and test anxiety. It is less effective than other behaviouraltreatments for snake and spider phobias.OCDFour studies have compared relaxation training with different types ofBehaviour Therapy (see page 27) in people with OCD. It was not foundto be as effective as these in any of the studies.ARE THERE ANY RISKS?There are no known risks.RECOMMENDATIONRelaxation training appears to work for GAD, Panic Disorder, PTSD,Social Phobia and some Specific Phobias. It is not as effective aspsychological therapies for PTSD, Social Phobia and OCD.HOW IS IT MEANT TO WORK?People with anxiety disorders are thought to have tense muscles.As relaxation training helps to relax muscles, it may also help to reduceanxious thoughts and behaviours. Relaxation training may also helppeople feel as if they have more control of their anxiety.DOES IT WORK?GADResearchers have pooled the results of studies on relaxation trainingwith GAD to get a clearer idea of the effects. Relaxation training hasbeen shown to be better than no treatment. It has also been shown tobe as effective as psychological therapies, mainly Cognitive BehaviourTherapy (CBT, see page 29).PTSD and ASDSix studies have looked at the effects of relaxation training on PTSD.These showed that relaxation training is better than no treatment.However, it is less effective than psychological therapies, including CBTand exposure therapy (Behaviour Therapy, see page 27).Social PhobiaFour studies have compared relaxation with other treatments for SocialPhobia. Relaxation training was shown to be better than no treatment.It was also shown to be less effective than psychological therapies,including CBT (see page 29).Panic Disorder and AgoraphobiaPooling together the results of studies on relaxation and Panic Disordershowed that relaxation training was better than no treatment. Resultsalso showed relaxation training to be as effective as drug treatmentsand psychological therapies, including CBT.54