Research at the Comprehensive Anxiety Center (CAC)

How does anxiety arise and how can it be conquered? The Comprehensive Anxiety Center (CAC) investigates these essential questions in numerous research projects. Be it basic research, translational or clinical health research – embedded in a national and international network, we provide the optimal infrastructure to find answers that help improve the diagnosis, therapy, and prevention of anxiety disorders.

CRC TRR 58 and PROTECT-AD

Our largest and most important research projects in recent years are the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) Transregio (TRR) 58 "Fear, anxiety and anxiety disorders" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), and the research network PROTECT-AD funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The CRC TRR 58 is generally aimed at gaining a better understanding of the basics of fear, anxiety and related disorders in many individual projects. In contrast, PROTECT-AD with its numerous working groups is dedicated to the questions of how and by what means the treatment and care of patients with anxiety disorders can be improved.

Further main research topics

We are also working on many other research projects on fear and anxiety. For example, we are interested in the development of anxiety disorders as a concomitant disease and in interrelationships with physical conditions. By founding our own Center for Prevention Research, we address the prevention of mental illness in general, but also of anxiety disorders in particular. In our clinical studies, we test new and supplementary methods and procedures, for example on arachnophobia, fear of heights, social phobias, or the fear of blood and injections.

Focus on children and adolescents

Since the occurrence and development of an anxiety disorder often have their origin in childhood and adolescence, the recognition and definition of risk factors is of the highest interest. The world's first major study on this subject systematically records personality structure, environment, and individual experiences – but also predisposition factors – to determine the ground from which the anxiety disorder originates, and aims to counteract it through prevention programs.