Study Design and Investigators

Collaborative Care for Anxiety and Panic (CCAP) was a randomized, controlled trial funded by the NIMH. CCAP sought to determine the extent to which the benefits of evidence-based, specialist-delivered panic disorder treatments (cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and medications) would generalize to non-specialist therapists treating a diverse patient population in the primary care setting. Three leading West Coast referral centers for the evaluation and treatment of patients with panic and related phobic-anxiety disorders (University of Washington, Seattle — P. Roy-Byrne MD; UCLA — M. Craske PhD; and UCSD — M. Stein MD) participated in this year long study, along with a data coordination center at RAND in LA (C. Sherbourne PhD). These investigators, with expertise in both efficacy trials/experimental psychopathology and effectiveness trials/health services research came together to evaluate a model of service delivery for panic disorder in primary care that employs treatments validated in efficacy studies but combines them with disease management principles based on the collaborative care model for the treatment for depression in primary care developed and tested by Wayne Katon MD. Greer Sullivan MD provided expert advice from a health services perspective and Alexander Bystritsky MD, co-investigator at UCLA, helped tailor our psychopharmacological guidelines.