title: Panic and phobic anxiety: associations among neuroticism, physiological hyperarousal, anxiety sensitivity, and three phobias.
abstract: A dimensional and psychometrically informed taxonomy of anxiety is emerging, but the specific and nonspecific dimensions of panic and phobic anxiety require greater clarification. In this study, confirmatory factor analyses of data from a sample of 438 college students were used to validate a model of panic and phobic anxiety with six content factors; multiple scales from self-report measures were indicators of each model component. The model included a nonspecific component of (1) neuroticism and two specific components of panic attack, (2) physiological hyperarousal, and (3) anxiety sensitivity. The model also included three phobia components of (4) classically defined agoraphobia, (5) social phobia, and (6) blood-injection phobia. In these data, agoraphobia correlated more strongly with both the social phobia and blood phobia components than with either the physiological hyperarousal or the anxiety sensitivity components. These findings suggest that the association between panic attacks and agoraphobia warrants greater attention.
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205-1900, USA. slongley@jhsph.edu
authors.forename: Susan L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Longley
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.forename: Russell
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Noyes
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yoder
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000379:Agoraphobia / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D001143:Arousal; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010200:Panic; D010551:Personality; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*