What is the best way to treat agoraphobia?

Many people often encounter agoraphobia in their daily lives. When treating agoraphobia, communication treatment should be carried out through cognitive behavioral therapy and drug therapy. The most important thing is psychological counseling. By communicating and adjusting the patient's psychology, a certain effect can be achieved.

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It includes three aspects: general psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and drug therapy.

(I) General psychotherapy, such as psychoeducation and supportive therapy, aims to reduce the patient's anticipatory anxiety and encourage the patient to re-enter the feared place; to reduce avoidance behavior, targeted cognitive behavioral therapy is needed.

(II) Cognitive behavioral therapy for agoraphobia without panic attacks mainly uses exposure therapy. The patient is first explained the nature of the disease, including the patient's anxious reaction to the situation, anticipatory anxiety and avoidance behavior, which are three relatively independent components, as well as the treatment measures taken for these three components. The patient is guided to imagine the feared place or situation, and then encouraged to enter the scene for exposure. The training is repeated until satisfactory results are achieved. Exposure therapy can be carried out collectively, or you can form a mutual aid group and do activities together. Cognitive therapy alone helps reduce anxiety and panic attacks but not agoraphobia, whereas exposure therapy reduces agoraphobia but not panic attacks.

(III) Drug treatment: Patients with panic attacks should first be treated with anti-panic drugs.