OBJECTIVE: In the United States, the consensus among clinicians
and researchers, reflected in DSM-III-R, is that agoraphobia is
a conditioned response to panic attacks and almost never occurs
without panic attacks. The predominant view in the United
Kingdom is that agoraphobia frequently occurs in the absence of
panic. While clinicians report that they rarely see patients
with agoraphobia who have no history of panic disorder,
community studies report that agoraphobia without panic disorder
is common. For example, the Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA)
study found that 68% of 961 persons with agoraphobia had no
history of panic attacks or disorder. METHOD: To understand this
discrepancy, 22 subjects who had been diagnosed as having
agoraphobia without panic disorder or panic attacks in the ECA
study were blindly reinterviewed 7-8 years later with the
Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia--Lifetime
Version Modified for the Study of Anxiety Disorders; data from
these interviews were blindly reviewe