ABSTRACT
The interpersonal aspects of panic disorder with agoraphobia deserve more clinical attention. Take, for example, the mother who experiences increased anxiety when her only child becomes school aged. The mother may develop anxiety attacks that subside in the child’s presence, which may then create dependence on the child. The child might, in turn, feel important because of being depended upon. In this way, the family system is set up to both tolerate and enable the anxiety. A structural family therapist might intervene, using restructuring techniques to alter dysfunctional transactional patterns that maintain the symptomatic behavior. Using this example, the therapist might instruct the mother and child to schedule time away from each other, attempting to break the pattern of child as “safe person.” Because change in any one part of the family system affects other parts of the system, one wonders how individual treatment of panic disorder with agoraphobia impacts the family system, and, further, what forces are in place to instigate a relapse.
