Cognitive and behavioral treatment for anxiety disorders: A review of meta-analytic findings

Behavioral and cognitive psychotherapies are the most widely studied psychological interventions for anxiety disorders. In the present article, the results of ten years of meta-analytic studies on psychotherapies for the various anxiety disorders are reviewed and the relative effectiveness of cognitive and behavioral therapeutic methods is examined. Meta-analytic results support the effectiveness of combined cognitive and behavioral approaches for anxiety disorders. Pure behavioral therapies also are effec-tive and appear to work as well as combined treatment for some dis-orders. Due to the small number of outcome studies involving pure cognitive treatments, reliable conclusions about the effectiveness of this approach cannot be offered. Additional theoretical and practical considerations ar