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Screen Patients With Panic Attacks For Drinking Issues


 

MIAMI — Higher self-reported alcohol consumption among men with panic attacks carries important implications for patient screening, according to a poster presentation at the annual conference of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

“The take-home message for physicians is to look for comorbidity in men with panic attacks for alcohol use and other substances,” Erin Marshall said in an interview.

Previous research indicated a relationship between panic attacks and drinking behaviors. “It could be a coping mechanism—people with panic attacks drink more than people without panic attacks,” said Ms. Marshall, doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Vermont at Burlington.

To assess associations between panic attacks, alcohol consumption, and gender, Ms. Marshall and her colleagues studied 413 college students in Mexico City. One of the collaborators, Samuel J. Cardenas, Ph.D., of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, facilitated recruitment of participants.

A total of 61% of participants were female. Each student completed self-report measures about substance use patterns and panic attack history.

“We found men with panic are drinking the most,” Ms. Marshall said.

As predicted, individuals experiencing panic attacks were significantly more likely to drink alcohol (P less than .01), as were males (P less than .001). In addition, “the interaction of panic attacks and gender incrementally predicted levels of alcohol consumption (P less than .001), such that the association between panic attacks and alcohol consumption was stronger in men than women,” the authors wrote.

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