Andi
12-24-05, 01:51 PM
Telephone-Based Intervention Improves Quality
Of Life for Those With Anxiety Disorders
December 12, 2005 Issue
A better life for people with general anxiety and panic disorders may be only a phone call away.
Pitt researchers report that telephone-based care for people with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder significantly improves their anxiety and depression symptoms as well as their mental health-related quality of life. Researchers also found that the intervention results in fewer missed workdays and less emergency room usage.
Pitt’s study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, is among the first to evaluate the efficacy of a telephone-based collaborative care intervention for anxiety disorders in a primary care setting, garnering results that could have far-reaching impact on how patients in all types of communities—urban, suburban, and rural—can be helped.
care physicians, with specialist involvement when necessary.
More than 30 million Americans have suffered from anxiety disorders at some point in their lives, research studies show. Approximately 12-22 percent of patients present symptoms of anxiety-related distress to their primary care physicians. The direct and indirect costs of anxiety disorders have been estimated at $42 billion a year in the United States; 10 percent of those costs come from missed work days and other workplace costs.
“There has been a surge of interest in treating anxiety disorders and depression in the primary care setting, but we had few time-efficient and cost-effective ways to treat these disorders,” said Bruce L. Rollman, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry in Pitt’s School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “We found that having nonmental health specialty care managers provide patients with information and support over the phone in collaboration with patients’ primary care physicians was indeed a very effective way of improving patients’ symptoms, quality of life, and patterns of employment. Perhaps most importantly, this method can be used in a variety of settings and could prove extremely beneficial to underserved populations.”
Researchers enrolled 191 adults, ages 18-64, diagnosed with symptoms of panic and/or generalized anxiety disorder at four primary care practices in the Pittsburgh area. The practices were all affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and included urban, suburban, and rural family practices with University-affiliated physicians.
Patients were randomized to receive either their primary care physician’s usual care for panic and generalized anxiety disorder or the telephone-based intervention. The latter used care managers who provided participants with psychoeducation about their anxiety disorders, discussed the participants’ treatment preferences, monitored treatment responses, and relayed this information to the patients’ primary care physicians via an electronic medical record system. Intervention patients received a median of 12 telephone contacts from their care managers over 12 months.
At the 12-month followup, those who participated in the telephone intervention were more likely to show a decline in anxiety and depressive symptoms, less likely to visit the emergency room, less likely to miss work, and able to work more hours than those receiving conventional care.
Coauthors of the study are Bea Herbeck Belnap, research associate in the Pitt medical school’s Center for Research on Health Care; Charles F. Reynolds III, Pitt professor of psychiatry, neurology, and neuroscience; Professor of Psychiatry M. Katherine Shear and Patricia R. Houck, statistical services administrator, both in the Pitt medical school’s Department of Psychiatry; Professor of Biostatistics Sati Mazumdar and Ph.D. degree candidate Fang Zhu, both in the Pitt Graduate School of Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics; and researchers from Ohio State University and Cornell University.
http://www.umc.pitt.edu/media/pcc/phone_therapy_2005DEC12.html
Of Life for Those With Anxiety Disorders
December 12, 2005 Issue
A better life for people with general anxiety and panic disorders may be only a phone call away.
Pitt researchers report that telephone-based care for people with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder significantly improves their anxiety and depression symptoms as well as their mental health-related quality of life. Researchers also found that the intervention results in fewer missed workdays and less emergency room usage.
Pitt’s study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, is among the first to evaluate the efficacy of a telephone-based collaborative care intervention for anxiety disorders in a primary care setting, garnering results that could have far-reaching impact on how patients in all types of communities—urban, suburban, and rural—can be helped.
care physicians, with specialist involvement when necessary.
More than 30 million Americans have suffered from anxiety disorders at some point in their lives, research studies show. Approximately 12-22 percent of patients present symptoms of anxiety-related distress to their primary care physicians. The direct and indirect costs of anxiety disorders have been estimated at $42 billion a year in the United States; 10 percent of those costs come from missed work days and other workplace costs.
“There has been a surge of interest in treating anxiety disorders and depression in the primary care setting, but we had few time-efficient and cost-effective ways to treat these disorders,” said Bruce L. Rollman, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry in Pitt’s School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “We found that having nonmental health specialty care managers provide patients with information and support over the phone in collaboration with patients’ primary care physicians was indeed a very effective way of improving patients’ symptoms, quality of life, and patterns of employment. Perhaps most importantly, this method can be used in a variety of settings and could prove extremely beneficial to underserved populations.”
Researchers enrolled 191 adults, ages 18-64, diagnosed with symptoms of panic and/or generalized anxiety disorder at four primary care practices in the Pittsburgh area. The practices were all affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and included urban, suburban, and rural family practices with University-affiliated physicians.
Patients were randomized to receive either their primary care physician’s usual care for panic and generalized anxiety disorder or the telephone-based intervention. The latter used care managers who provided participants with psychoeducation about their anxiety disorders, discussed the participants’ treatment preferences, monitored treatment responses, and relayed this information to the patients’ primary care physicians via an electronic medical record system. Intervention patients received a median of 12 telephone contacts from their care managers over 12 months.
At the 12-month followup, those who participated in the telephone intervention were more likely to show a decline in anxiety and depressive symptoms, less likely to visit the emergency room, less likely to miss work, and able to work more hours than those receiving conventional care.
Coauthors of the study are Bea Herbeck Belnap, research associate in the Pitt medical school’s Center for Research on Health Care; Charles F. Reynolds III, Pitt professor of psychiatry, neurology, and neuroscience; Professor of Psychiatry M. Katherine Shear and Patricia R. Houck, statistical services administrator, both in the Pitt medical school’s Department of Psychiatry; Professor of Biostatistics Sati Mazumdar and Ph.D. degree candidate Fang Zhu, both in the Pitt Graduate School of Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics; and researchers from Ohio State University and Cornell University.
http://www.umc.pitt.edu/media/pcc/phone_therapy_2005DEC12.html