The term panic is used with a vast variety of meanings by the population at large, as well as by professionals and research scientists in different disciplines. For example, economists talk of financial or stock market panics, scholars of popular culture discuss moral panics or widespread public anxieties about deviant behaviors, and journalists sometime refer to certain kinds of hoarding or buying activities as an expression of panicky behavior. However, this entry confines itself to the two major usages of the term in the scientific and professional literature, which have little to do with the examples just given.
Even the two major usages differ. Along one line, there is an identification of panic with certain kinds of overt behavior by a number of people, such as rapid physical flight from a situation perceived as highly and personally dangerous to individuals in the collectivity involved. Sociologists have primarily used the term this way, and to a lesser extent so have psychologists. The other use of the term has reference to a mental state characterized by a sudden and extreme anxiety attack, with the person being unable to perceive any obvious reason for the reaction. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, who have been the primary students of this phenomenon, call it panic disorder.
Apart from using the same term, panic, there is otherwise very little in common between the two approaches. Interest in and study of the phenomena have had radically different origins and have involved different kinds of research by different specialties. In addition, the end goal of the research has differed. Those looking at panic disorder have increasingly come to believe that the mental problem can be dealt with through therapeutic and other measures. Those interested in flight behavior initially thought that understanding such behavior would be useful for disaster planning and crisis management purposes. However, as more empirical studies of disasters have been undertaken, many researchers have increasingly argued that the very concept of panic should be abandoned as a useful concept for scientific research. They argue that what occurs can be much better understood through other concepts, such as social roles and social relationships.
PANIC AS A SUBTYPE OF ANXIETY DISORDER
Panic disorder involves unexpected and repeated episodes of intense anxiety attacks accompanied by physical symptoms that may include chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, abdominal distress, trembling, dizziness, and a sense of unreality. An attack generally peaks within ten minutes, although some symptoms may last much longer. Many of those suffering from the disorder develop intense anxiety between episodes because they worry when and where the next one will strike. Routines of everyday life can be totally disrupted.
According to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, in any given year 1.7 percent of the American population will have a panic disorder. Females are twice as likely as males to develop panic disorders. Panic disorder usually occurs in early adulthood. Roughly half of all people who have panic disorder develop the condition before the age of twenty-four. Such statistics ought to be treated with caution, however; panic attacks are sometimes misdi-agnosed and missed because many of the symptoms resemble heart attacks. Also, not everyone who experiences a panic attack will develop panic disorder; people can experience one attack but never have another.
What exactly causes the disorder is unknown. Heredity is probably involved, since the disorder seems to run in families. But there is also evidence that very stressful life events are a factor.
Fortunately, two types of treatment are available for panic disorder. There are medications that can keep symptoms under control as long as the prescribed medication is used. There are also specific kinds of psychotherapy that can teach sufferers how to view panic attacks differently, as well as ways to deal with the anxiety between attacks. Reports on success rates vary considerably, but it appears that a majority of those treated are helped. However, since panic disorder often coexists with other disorders and physical ailments, restoration to a less stressful life is also dependent on treatment of these other problems. Information on panic disorder and its treatment is available on the Internet, but care should be taken to insure that such reports are from legitimate medical sources.
PANIC FLIGHT AS A FORM OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR
In the 1920s, sociologists interested in the study of collective behavior (which looks at nontraditional or emergent behavior) began discussing instances of panic in certain risky situations, such as a fire in a crowded theater. The prevailing idea was that panic involved extreme and groundless fear that spread in a contagion-like way, resulting in irrational flight behavior, with individuals trampling one another. This view of panic is still commonly depicted in disaster movies and television shows.
However, the emergence of systematic disaster studies in the mid-twentieth century led to some reformulations about the nature of panic and the conditions necessary for its emergence. Research has shown that panic flight, while not unknown, is extremely rare in disasters and similar kinds of crises. The notion that panic behavior spreads through contagion has been widely discredited. The behavior is not irrational from the viewpoint of those involved. There is no evidence that certain kinds of people are more likely to flee in panic. At worst, panic is asocial rather than antisocial in that people do not regress to an animal-like response.
Panic flight also occurs only under specific conditions. Potential participants must believe that there is an immediate and certain risk to their own life. Contrary to stereotypic views, flight will not be attempted if there is a belief that one is completely trapped. In other words, there must be hope that escape is possible. Persons who break in panic know what they are afraid of, and they are moving away from a specific location (in contrast to a stampede, which involves convergence). It is fear, not anxiety, that prevails. Finally, what others are doing around a person is crucial. This social interaction can work both ways, but usually reinforces a tendency not to flee.
