The Balkan region preferences for the treatment of anxiety disorders

Abstract

The most countries from West Balkan region do not have the official guidelines for the treatment of patients with anxiety disorders (AD).

We have done the survey on preferences of treatment of patients with AD. We have collected data from sample of 221 psychiatrists from Croatia (41 psychiatrists), Macedonia (81 psychiatrists) and Serbia (99 psychiatrists). They give as information about their preferences for treating patients with AD.

The results indicate that the vast majority of psychiatrists report that almost all patients with AD receive benzodiazepines prior to first psychiatric visit. The majority of psychiatrist would opt for SSRI/SNRI antidepressants (91–97%) as the monotherapy or in combination with benzodiazepines (53–59%) or in combination with cognitive-behavior (25–35%) or psychodynamic psychotherapy (12–16%).

The most indicative difference between psychiatrists from different countries is result about the use of pregabalin – almost half of Serbian subsample would opt for pregabalin, but only a quarter of Croatian subsample and no psychiatrist from Macedonian subsample would choose pregabalin. Also, much more Macedonian and Serbian psychiatrist would opt for CBT treatment, but, in contrast, much more Croatian psychiatrist would opt for psychodynamic psychotherapy versus CBT. There is the dissimilarity between preferences for patients’ treatment and preferences for psychiatrists himself/herself treatment:

– more than half of the sample would opt for benzodiazepines in their patients but only the third of the sample would prefer benzodiazepines for himself/herself treatment;

– more psychiatrists would prefer to receive psychotherapy treatment than they would prefer to give it to their patients.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.