Anxiety sensitivity and dependency in clinical and non-clinical panickers and controls

The personality traits of anxiety sensitivity and dependency and their relationship to the experience of panic anxiety and panic disorder with agoraphobia were investigated. The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) and the Interpersonal Dependency Inventory (IDI) were completed by 116 university students and 23 clinical panic disorder (with agoraphobia) patients. Nineteen percent of the college control sample reported prior experience with spontaneous panic attacks. Patients scored significantly higher than controls on the ASI, total IDI, and the "lack of social self-confidence" subscale of the IDI. Non-clinical student panickers and non-panickers failed to differ significantly on any of the personality measures, suggesting that dependency and anxiety sensitivity may be more likely results of repeated experiences of panic over time and agoraphobic avoidance than they are predisposing factors. The ASI scores were found to correlate significantly with the IDI and with two of its subscales, suggesting that anxiety sensitive individuals tend to be low in social self-confidence and highly reliant on significant others.