Agoraphobia

Risk Factors

Stress and negative life events or experiences, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, substance abuse

Efficacy of Alternative and Other Treatments According to GRADE* Ranking:

St John's Wort (Goatweed, tipton weed, Hypericum Perforatum) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]:

Please note, this management does NOT treat the condition itself. It may mildly help with some of the symptoms, and even then has insufficient evidence to back up this claim at present.

Recommendation: No recommendation (There is insufficient evidence to support claims that St Johns Wort helps to treat social phobias. There are currenly studies being done to further research these claims.)

Grade of Evidence: very low quality of evidence

Creative Art Therapy (Expressive Therapy)

Recomendation: no recommendation (there is insufficient positive evidence showing Expressive Therapy helping to reduce phobias)

Grade of Evidence: very low quality of evidence

Hypnosis:

Recommendation: stongly in favor (Hypnosis is used by therapists to help eliminate their phobias or their effects)

Grade of Evidence: moderate quality of evidence

Image Therapy:

Recommendation: no recommendation (There is insufficient evidence to show that Image Therapy helps reduce or treat phobias)

Grade of Evidence: low quality of evidence

Neuro-Linguistic Programming:

Recommendation: no recommendation (although a small study has shown that NLP may help with phobias, the methods used have been found to be unreliable)

Grade of Evidence: low quality of evidence

* www.gradeworkinggroup.org

Summary References

Treatments:

1. Ades T, Alteri R, Gansler T, Yeargin P, "Complete Guide to Complimentary & Alternative Cancer Therapies", American Cancer Society, Atlanta USA, 2009

2. http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/TreatmentsandSideEffects/ComplementaryandAlternativeMedicine/HerbsVitaminsandMinerals/st-johns-wort

3. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/patient-stjohnswort.html

4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18843608

5. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11939866

6. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/ataglance.htm

7. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/sjw-and-depression.htm

8. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/how-is-depression-detected-and-treated.shtml

9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11939872

10. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12132963

11. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16423519

12. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/299/22/2633

Public Discussion