MATERIALS AND METHODS
This quantitative and descriptive study employed a consecutive
sample of volunteers consisting of 50 patients with
PD with agoraphobia and 70 control volunteers with no psychiatric
disorders. Psychiatrists at the Laboratory of Panic
and Respiration (LABPR) of the Institute of Psychiatry
(IPUB) within the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
(UFRJ) diagnosed the patients according to the diagnostic
criteria of DSM-IV-TR [1], and a complementary clinical
evaluation tool, the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview
(MINI) version 5.0.0 [12], evaluated psychiatric disorders.