New and emerging treatments for anxiety disorders - PubMed (original) (raw)

Review

. 2026 Mar 16:392:e083441.

doi: 10.1136/bmj-2024-083441.

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Review

New and emerging treatments for anxiety disorders

Tomislav D Zbozinek et al. BMJ. 2026.

Abstract

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 (_D_-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.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: TDZ and MGC have no interests to declare. SSK declares he is an uncompensated member of several executive boards: the International Society for Contemplative Research (ISCR) and the Float Research Collective. SSK has previously performed compensated scientific consulting for Janssen Pharmaceuticals and currently serves on a Data Safety Monitoring Board for Engrail Pharmaceuticals. SSK is also a contributing author on complementary and alternative treatments for anxiety symptoms and disorders for UpToDate.

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