It is never too late to treat anxiety neurosis or panic disorder with a serotonin-reuptake inhibitor

In a register study on patients hospitalized in the 1950s for anxiety neurosis, going until 1994 for diagnostic behaviour and until 2004 for suicidal behaviour, we found a co-existence with depression. However, the study has no information about therapy. Just after the finalization of this study, one of the patients was hospitalized in our department for depression. At that time the patient was 70 years old; at his index hospitalization in 1954 he was 30 years of age. Throughout his 40 years of illness he had received no psychiatric treatment. The spontaneous course went from panic attacks through stages of phobia and avoidance behaviour until the final stage of depression. At 70 years of age, for the first time in his life, he received antidepressant medication in the form of a specific serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. After 6 weeks of therapy not only the depression but also the anxiety disorder remitted.