BACKGROUND This article aims at determining the place of benzodiazepines in the current treatment of anxiety disorders in opposition to antidepressants, neuroleptics and anticonvulsants. Belgium and France are the only two European countries which prescribe the most benzodiazepines despite the dissuasion of the international guidelines (NICE) issued in the nineties concerning the high risk of d...

Mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety, pose both medical and social challenges. The clinical efficacy of current antidepressant/anxiolytic therapies is unsatisfactory; both antidepressant and anxiolytic drugs induce a variety of unwanted effects and have delayed onsets of action. Thus, a search for better and safer agents is continuously in progress. Preclinical results published so ...

Original drug classifications from the 1960s through the 1970s and into the 1980s emphasized that there were important distinctions between the antidepressants (e.g., tricyclic antidepressants) and the anxiolytics (e.g., benzodiazepines and buspirone) available at that time. This emphasis reflected the diagnostic notions prevalent at that time, which tended to dichotomize major depressive disor...

Anxiety disorders frequently affect the general population and have a lifetime prevalence ranging from 13.6% to 28.8%. This paper reviews full articles dealing with the pharmacological treatments of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder (PD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This review also attempts to evaluate the use of new drugs act...

Anxiety disorders are common in children and adolescents with reported prevalence rates between 10% and 30%. A combined approach to treatment has been found to be the most effective for optimal outcomes and is typically comprised of psychotherapy (especially exposure-based cognitive behavior therapy), family and patient education, and use of medication if indicated. In children and adolescents ...

Powerful behavioural treatments for many patients with anxiety disorders have been widely available since the 1970s. Despite this, the majority of such patients have continued to be treated with psychotrophic drugs. Recent litigation against the manufacturers of benzodiazepine drugs has made the public increasingly concerned about the prescription of anxiolytic agents. In parallel with the fall...

It was shown that the anxiolytic effect of Selank is comparable to that of classical benzodiazepine drugs and that the basis of their mechanism of action may be similar. These data suggest that the presence of Selank may change the action of classical benzodiazepine drugs. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated the anxiolytic activity of Selank and diazepam in rats both under conditions of unpre...

Drugs to reduce anxiety have been used by human beings for thousands of years. One of the first anxiolytics and one that continues to be used by humans is ethanol. A detailed description of ethanol’s action may be found in Chapter 100. A number of other drugs including the barbiturates and the carbamates (meprobamate) were used in the first half of the 20th century and some continue to be used ...

A double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy an ethanolic extract of Aswagandha (Withania somnifera), in patients with ICD-10 anxiety disorders. The sample comprised 39 subjects, of whom 20 received the drug and 19 received placebo. The two groups were sociodemographically and clinically similar at baseline. At 2 and 6 weeks follow-up, data from approximately ...

Comparing the efficacy of different treatments in psychiatry is difficult for many reasons, even when they are investigated in "head-to-head" studies. A consensus meeting was, therefore, held to produce best practice guidelines for such studies. This article presents the conclusions of this consensus and illustrates it using published data in the field of antidepressant treatment of generalized...