Psychotherapy appears to be beneficial in the longer run for people suffering from panic disorder, a new study suggests.

Psychotherapy is a general term for treating mental health problems by talking with a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health providers.

"Treatment is crucial as the disorder often leads to a downward spiral in which the margin for everyday life activities becomes increasingly narrow," Nilsson added.

For the study, the team included 221 participants and studied not only the short and long-term effects of therapy but also how treatment outcome was affected by offering the patients to choose their treatment.

One half of the patients were allowed to choose their form of therapy and the other half were randomly assigned to one or the other.

In previous research this has been the case, and psychologists generally take patient preferences into account in treatment decisions. Therefore, the researchers were surprised by the result -- patients who had chosen PDT tended to have better outcomes than those who were randomly assigned to the same treatment.

(This story was published from a syndicated feed. Only the headline and picture has been edited by FIT).