The Drug Treatment of Anxiety

ANXIETY is the distressing experience of dread and foreboding, with an array of autonomic concomitants (Table 1). The therapeutic benefits obtained from antianxiety medication, weighed against the adverse effects, have been a matter of considerable public controversy. Although lay media and Senate hearings have decried benzodiazepines as rampantly overprescribed and dangerous, offering dramatic individual cases of iatrogenous toxicity, more rigorous and extensive surveys have concluded that reckless overprescribing is rare and that these agents are relatively safe.1 , 2 In 1979, over 60 million prescriptions were filled in the United States for benzodiazepines, perennially among the nation's most prescribed drugs. The attitudes . . .