Behaviour completion mechanisms, anxiety and agoraphobia.

Little attention has been paid to the situations which provoke the initial attack of anxiety in agoraphobia. According to the behaviour completion hypothesis many normal subjects experience increased tension in such situations when there is a delay in the completion of a behaviour. One hundred and eight medical students completed a questionnaire designed to investigate this hypothesis. They reported experiencing increased tension or anxiety significantly more frequently in situations provoking agoraphobia when the situations contained a component of delay, as compared to such situations without this component, or to situations not commonly provoking agoraphobia. It is proposed that tension, anxiety and panic form a continuum of increasing levels of arousal, but are associated with different cognitions. It is further proposed that the arousal level of agoraphobics is sensitized, so that delay which provokes mild increases of arousal in the healthy, provokes high arousal in agoraphobics. This finding supports the hypothesis that delay in behaviour completion is a mechanism in the generation of tension and anxiety.