Topics: Anxiety | Anxiety Disorder | Free Articles | Registered Articles

Benzodiazepines (BZDs) are widely used, rarely studied, and much maligned. So where exactly do they fit in today’s medication arsenal for treating anxiety? This article discusses when BZDs are appropriate and when they are not, and how to choose among the various BZDs. But before doing so, let’s first address the elephant that always seems to be lurking in the BZD room: their addictive potential.

There’s a new diagnosis in the DSM-5 called anxious distress. But is this truly a new diagnosis, or just another way of defining depression? This month, we spoke with Mark Zimmerman, MD, a clinician and leading researcher on the topic of anxious distress, to get some answers.

With neurofeedback, patients are hooked up to an EEG and shown images through various forms of media. The idea is that the EEG can detect brain waves that are associated with improvement in various symptoms, and then the patient can be taught to produce “healthier” brain waves.

Over the last several years, there’s been a lively debate about the efficacy of antidepressants. Meta-analyses have shown that antidepressants do outperform placebo in most studies. However, active medications cause more side effects than placebo pills.

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