ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the controversies concerning continuities and discontinuities in the anxiety disorders. Psychiatry, as a medical speciality, had its origins in the late eighteenth century with growing concern for the insane. Medical physicians first became involved in the care of the insane in institutions, usually called asylums, or retreats. Psychiatric writings through the nineteenth century were focused on conditions which today we would consider psychoses. The experience of psychiatrists in the military in the First World War focused attention on various kinds of war neuroses, or traumatic neuroses. The development of multivariate statistical techniques and the availability of high-speed electronic computers made possible the application of these techniques to psychopathology in large samples. Individuals who experience anxiety disorder tend to have other psychiatric disorders, including other anxiety disorders, over their lifetime. The development of structured interviews and diagnostic algorithms embody these descriptions.
