Panic disorder: strategies for long-term treatment.

Issues in the treatment of panic disorder now focus on long-term maintenance treatment with medication. The author sets the stage for our current understanding of panic disorder by describing the historical development of our knowledge of this disorder, past and current psychiatric diagnostic systems, and the symptoms of panic disorder. He states that this supplement reviews much of the great amount of research done on panic disorder in the 1980s and concludes with descriptions of each of the papers in this supplement.