A Psycho-Biological Approach to the Acute Anxiety Attack

Abstract

The psychiatrist, the neurologist and the cardiologist all meet with patients who complain of their liability to a certain type of “attack” characterized by alteration of their apprehension of reality, varying degrees of subjective distress, and bodily symptoms of autonomic dysfunction, amongst which the cardiac components are given the most prominence. These attacks are often referred to as “acute anxiety attacks” by the psychiatrist and “vaso-vagal attacks” by the neurologist and the cardiologist, and vary considerably in their features and severity. The neurologist sees the most punched out clinical pattern, and in consequence it was the neurologist, Sir William Gowers, who first drew attention to them in his book, The Borderland of Epilepsy.