New and emerging treatments for anxiety disorders

Anxiety 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 (<i>D</i>-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.