New and emerging treatments for anxiety disorders

AbstractAnxiety disorders affect a large portion of the population. While standard treatments show efficacy, rates of treatment non-response and relapse highlight the need to augment existing treatments or develop new ones. This review summarizes new and emerging stand-alone treatments and treatment augmentation strategies for anxiety disorders. Novel stand-alone treatments include newer psychotherapies (reward-based treatments and safety behavior reduction strategies); an interoception enhancement technique (floatation-REST); transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS); pharmacological agents (maritupirdine); and natural supplements—including ashwagandha and L-theanine. Novel treatment augmentation strategies all aim to improve exposure therapy, which include new behavioral techniques (inhibitory retrieval model of exposure therapy, behavioral experiments targeting intolerance of uncertainty) or pharmacological agents (D-cycloserine, scopolamine). Cannabidiol has been studied as a stand-alone treatment and augmentation strategy. Most of these treatments have shown at least some efficacy. Some novel treatments can be implemented clinically, while others await further testing.