additional information regarding the safety, interactions, and effectiveness of these 
 treatments will be available.
COMBINING MEDICATIONS
Your doctor may recommend combining several medications for treating your social 
anxiety. In most cases, there is very little research on the beneﬁts of combining differ -
ent medications. However, one combination that has been studied for the treatment of 
anxiety is the combination of an antidepressant (for example, paroxetine) with a benzodi -
azepine (for example, clonazepam). Ideally, both drugs are started at the same time. The 
benzodiazepine helps to keep the anxiety under control during the ﬁrst few weeks while 
the person waits for the antidepressant to start working. Then, once the  antidepressant 
kicks in, the benzodiazepine is discontinued gradually. 
A limited number of studies have investigated whether it is useful to combine an 
SSRI with a benzodiazepine. Whereas some studies of anxiety problems other than 
social phobia suggest that this combination is useful for reducing anxiety symptoms 
more quickly than an SSRI alone (Pollack et al. 2003), a study of people suffering from 
social phobia did not ﬁnd any added beneﬁt of combining medications on the rate of 
recovery (Seedat and Stein 2004).