NONCLINICAL PANICKERS - A CRITICAL-REVIEW

This paper provides a review of the literature on nonclinical panickers (NCPs). There are five major areas of focus: (a) prevalence of panic attacks and factors affecting prevalence rates, (b) panic symptom profile, (c) measures of psychopathology, (d) family history of panic attacks, and (e) psychophysiological responses to challenge tasks. For all five areas findings on nonclinical panic (NCP) were compared with research on clinical samples. Results from these five areas suggest that: (a) Reported prevalence of panic attacks depends greatly on the way in which panic attacks are defined and measured; (b) the symptom profile of NCP is highly consistent across studies; (c) levels of associated depressed and anxious mood are consistent across studies and show that the scores of NCPs fall between those of nonpanickers and clinical panickers; (d) NCPs, compared to nonpanickers, report a higher prevalence of family members experiencing panic attacks; and (e) psychophysiological responses to challenge tasks show both similarities and differences to those of nonpanickers and clinical patients. The requirement that NCP be spontaneous in nature is not valid. Finally, the relationship of NCP to clinical syndromes is discussed.