INTRODUCTION: The objective of this study is: 1) to determine the prevalence of panic disorder and social phobia in patients hospitalized due to the use of psychoactive substances; 2) to determine the temporal relation between the beginning of these anxiety disorders and the beginning of the use of psychoactive substances. METHODS: The psychiatric diagnoses were made by means of semi-structured clinical interviews (SCID-I), based on DSM-IV criteria. A questionnaire was developed by the authors for the purpose of studying the temporal relation between the beginning of the disorder due to psychoactive substances and the beginning of panic disorder and social phobia. RESULTS: Only 1 (2 %) patient had panic disorder before using psychoactive substances. Most of the patients suffering from panic disorder fulfilled the criteria for the diagnosis of anxiety disorder induced by use of the substance: 11 (22.9 %) of them had panic attacks only while under the effect of drugs or during the withdrawal syndrome, i.e., secondarily to the use of drugs. Sixteen (33.3 %) of the patients had social phobia, and in all of them, the social phobia began before the use of psychoactive substances. CONCLUSIONS: The findings confirmed the high frequency of social phobia in psychoactive substance-dependent patients and they reinforce the self-medication hypothesis in this comorbidity, since that kind of phobia tends to precede the use of drugs. As for panic disorder, in our sample it appears to derive from a complication of the use of psychoactive substances.
Social phobia; panic disorder; psychoactive drugs; temporal relationship
