Brown study: Anxiety care uneven and lengthy

PROVIDENCE – Most patients with anxiety disorders eventually get the medical help they need, but it can take years for their treatment plans to come together. These were the findings of a five-year study of 534 people conducted by Brown University psychiatry researchers, published Nov. 4 in the online journal, Depression and Anxiety.
“The good news here was that eventually, most patients got some good treatment,” the study’s lead author, Risa Weisberg, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School, said in a statement. “The bad news is that pharmacotherapy wasn’t sustained for long periods of time, that cognitive-behavioral therapy was rarely received even over the longer time period.”
The study, which was funded by Pfizer Inc., specifically found that 28 percent of the study’s participants were receiving “potentially adequate care” of some kind when first recruited into the study, and by year five, 69 percent had received either appropriate medication or psychosocial therapy, or both.
The study also found that people with severe anxiety symptoms were more likely to receive adequate care. •

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