Dec 2009/Jan 2010

Panic Disorder - The Facts

by

Stanley Rachman and Padmal de Silva

This is the third edition of a very useful and informative book on Panic Disorder.  It is compact, user friendly with key points and case studies highlighted.  In this new style of presentation of  this series of ‘the facts’ books, the key points are set out at the beginning of each chapter and common questions about panic disorders are dealt with in the concluding chapter.

This particular book review should actually be Margaret’s book review as the forward to Panic Disorder – The Facts, is written by Margaret Hawkins, Chairperson of No Panic whose assessment of the book, I wholeheartedly agree with.

Margaret writes as follows:-

I have read this book from a personal as well as a professional point of view.  I know how terrifying the symptoms can be, having       experienced panic disorder myself, and it is not something that I would trivialise.

During the last 15 years I have worked with anxiety sufferers at No Panic and the majority of our help-line callers phone because they are desperately afraid of panic attacks. They cannot believe such intense feelings of terror are not the precursor to a major mental/physical    disaster.  To get some sense of the scale of the problem, the No Panic charity took 75,000 calls to the help-line last year; imagine how immense the numbers of panic sufferers must be worldwide.

The book will be of great help to professionals and sufferers alike as it is extremely comprehensive and covers every aspect of the illness.  The case studies illuminate the idiosyncrasies and false presumptions that sufferers begin to believe are realities.  These mistaken beliefs are contradicted by the explanations given to patients to show how wrong their thinking processes are and how they can be changed, allowing progress towards recovery.

The chapter Theories of panic disorder is especially interesting as it shows how the illness has been approached over a period of years and both biological and psychological theories are covered by the authors. I was delighted to see that suggested treatments were practical, based on common sense, and compatible with what No Panic, as a self-help organisation, advocates.

It gives me great pleasure to be able to recommend this book; I think it will become an important contribution to the understanding of complex anxiety disorders.

Margaret Hawkins, Chairperson, NO PANIC, July 2009

I endorse all that Margaret has said and found the case studies of particular       interest.  My only small criticism is the use of bright green to highlight key points and case studies as I do find it   unnecessarily harsh on the eye.

Published by Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-957469-8

From all good book shops and Amazon @ £9.89 

If anyone is interested in purchasing this book you can obtain a special No Panic discount by going to the No Panic website, clicking on useful links in the menu and when it opens up, double click book offer.