Elevated accuracy in recognition of subliminal happy facial expressions in patients with panic disorder after psychotherapy.

Background: Individuals with anxiety disorders (ADs) often display hypervigilance to threat information, although this response may be less pronounced following psychotherapy. This study aims to investigate the unconscious recognition performance of facial expressions in patients with panic disorder (PD) post-treatment, shedding light on alterations in their emotional processing biases.

Methods: Patients with PD (n=34) after (exposure-based) cognitive behavior therapy and healthy controls (n=43) performed a subliminal affective recognition task.