panic
Enable an AI agent to recognise a reported or suspected episode of panic, assess its course and effects on action, and identify appropriate support without assuming a diagnosis.
Research draft, second pass
A second pass drafted this model: the structure a model of this thing needs, and what is known about it in the world. The line under this one says how the second half was obtained - researched against sources, or recalled without web access, in which case nothing here was read anywhere and every claim is a lead to verify. Unreviewed either way.
Researched by: Codex + Grok
Purpose and description
Enable an AI agent to recognise a reported or suspected episode of panic, assess its course and effects on action, and identify appropriate support without assuming a diagnosis.
Panic is a sudden, intense fear response in a person or group that outruns appraisal of the actual threat and produces poorly controlled flight, freeze, or crowding rather than organised coping.
It can be Create a provisional episode account that separates self-report, observation, and inference.; Track escalation and recovery using the person's own descriptions and feasible check-ins.; Separate perceived threat from independently established situational danger.; Adapt interaction to current communication capacity and expressed preferences.; Identify whether a proposed immediate action is feasible, wanted, and compatible with safety.; Prepare a concise handoff that preserves uncertainty, outstanding concerns, and support already attempted..
Distinguishing features
Distinguish panic from ordinary fear by recording whether the person reports overwhelming alarm, urgent escape pressure, or disruption of their ability to choose and act; a threat cue alone does not establish panic.
Distinguish an episode from sustained anxiety by checking for a discernible surge or change from the person's preceding state, while allowing uncertain boundaries.
Distinguish panic from visible agitation by seeking the person's account: restless behaviour alone is insufficient, and apparent stillness does not settle the interpretation.
Distinguish panic from deliberate emergency action by examining experienced alarm and choice restriction rather than treating rapid evacuation as evidence.
Distinguish an episode from a disorder by keeping recurrence and diagnostic attribution separate from the present event.
Scope
+ Reported panic and observations that support or challenge that interpretation
+ Perceived threat, uncertainty, and immediate situational danger
+ Changes in bodily experience, attention, communication, and action
+ Episode onset, escalation, fluctuation, and recovery
+ Available support, expressed preferences, and immediate decision constraints
- Panic disorder and other longitudinal diagnostic models
- Medical conditions that may explain overlapping experiences
- General fear, anxiety, stress, and distress without an identified panic episode
- Crowd dynamics and collective emergency behaviour
- Software or operating-system panic
- Long-term treatment plans and medication management
Characteristics
- Interpretation status
- self-described panic | suspected panic | disputed interpretation | unresolved Prevents an observer's label from becoming an established fact.
- Episode phase
- onset | escalating | sustained | easing | re-escalating | ended | unclear Makes changes in urgency and ability to engage visible.
- Experienced intensity
- Person-selected verbal or numerical scale, with anchors and observation time recorded Supports comparison within an episode without assuming a universal threshold.
- Episode timing
- Reported or observed onset time and elapsed seconds or minutes, including uncertainty Separates a current episode from a retrospective account and tracks its course.
- Perceived threat
- Person's connection between alarm and an external event, bodily sensation, thought, memory, or unknown cue Identifies what the person experiences as threatening without endorsing that interpretation.
- Bodily experience
- Person-described sensations and separately attributed observations; absent, unknown, and unassessed remain distinct Preserves evidence without treating any sensation as proof of panic.
- Action capacity
- Ability to communicate, consider options, move safely, and carry out a chosen step, assessed separately Shows what decisions or actions are currently feasible.
- Action pressure
- Reported urge to escape, seek help, remain still, seek reassurance, take another action, or no identified urge Separates felt urgency from intended and completed behaviour.
- Support response
- Connection between a specific support attempt and subsequent reported or observed change, with attribution uncertainty Helps adapt support without assuming that temporal sequence proves benefit.
Also called
Where this came from
wikidata · CC0 1.0
Also registered as vr.tr.panic
Drafted structure
Bundle to layer to finding to question, as the second pass will find it: 6 bundles · 11 layers · 18 findings · 28 questions.
Panic recognition Establishes why this event is being interpreted as panic and how secure that interpretation is.
Panic cannot be established from a label, bodily sensation, or visible behaviour alone.
Experienced alarm
Records the person's account of acute alarm and its departure from their preceding experience.
Person-described panic
Preserves the person's words about alarm, overwhelm, and urgency without substituting a diagnosis.
- What does the person mean by panic in this episode, and what feels different from ordinary fear or worry? definition
- Was this account provided during the episode or recalled later, and by whom? provenance
Interpretation boundaries
Tests the panic interpretation against missing evidence and plausible neighbouring explanations.
Supporting and conflicting evidence
Separates evidence for panic from signs that are ambiguous or require another explanation.
- Which observations support the panic interpretation, and which are only an observer's inference? provenance
- What remains unexplained if this event is treated as panic? boundary
Threat and escape Connects the alarm to experienced danger and the person's perceived routes to safety.
An agent must understand the pressure to escape while assessing actual circumstances separately.
Threat meaning
Records what the person fears is happening or about to happen.
Feared immediate outcome
Captures the anticipated harm and its relationship to external events, sensations, or thoughts.
- What does the person fear will happen next, if they can describe it? definition
- Which cue is linked to that fear in their account, and is the link known or tentative? provenance
Situational danger and exit
Distinguishes experienced entrapment from established hazards and available safe actions.
Escape pressure and options
Records the urge to leave or obtain safety alongside the practical constraints on doing so.
- What danger or restriction is independently established, and what is currently a feared possibility? boundary
- Which immediate options are available, and can the person choose and carry out one safely? action
Panic expression and agency Records how the episode affects bodily experience, attention, communication, and chosen action.
The same intensity label can conceal different support needs and different capacities to act.
Bodily and attentional experience
Captures sensations and changes in attention without treating them as diagnostic criteria.
Sensations and attention
Records what the person notices in their body and whether attention is fixed on threat or difficult to redirect.
- What bodily sensations or changes in attention are reported, and how intense are they in the person's terms? measurement
- Which experiences are familiar to the person, and which are new or unresolved enough to require separate assessment? boundary
Choice and communication
Assesses usable capacity without equating panic with total loss of control.
Available deliberate action
Separates urges, intentions, and completed actions while identifying an accessible way to communicate.
- What does the person feel compelled to do, what do they want to do, and what have they actually done? measurement
- What communication format and size of next step can they currently manage? action
Episode course Tracks the boundaries and changing state of the panic episode.
Recognition and support depend on whether alarm is rising, persisting, easing, or returning.
Onset and escalation
Establishes a timeline without imposing a fixed duration or required speed of onset.
Episode transition
Records the earliest identifiable change and the sequence of subsequent escalation.
- When did the person first notice a change, and how certain is that timing? measurement
- What changed before or during escalation, and which proposed connections remain unverified? provenance
Easing and return
Tracks partial recovery and renewed alarm using reported experience as well as observable function.
Recovery evidence
Distinguishes reduced outward expression from reduced distress and restored ability to act.
- What has changed in reported alarm and practical ability since the previous check? measurement
- What evidence supports treating the episode as ended, continuing, or re-escalating? boundary
Support during panic Records acceptable support, its observed effects, and unresolved needs during the episode.
Support must fit the person's current capacity and preferences, and a panic interpretation must not close off other needed help.
Support fit
Identifies forms of interaction or assistance the person can use and wants to receive.
Accepted support
Records preferences about company, space, communication, and involvement of a trusted person.
- What assistance does the person request, accept, or decline, and how was that preference expressed? action
- What is known from this person's experience about support that helps or increases their distress? provenance
Response and handoff
Evaluates support attempts and preserves issues that require human or separate assessment.
Support effect and unresolved needs
Links each attempted intervention to subsequent changes without assuming causation or that panic explains every concern.
- After a support attempt, what changed in the person's reported distress, communication, or ability to act? measurement
- What unresolved danger, unexplained experience, or unmet support need requires a handoff, and what information should accompany it? action
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Kinds and varieties
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Clinical panic attack (abrupt surge of intense fear with somatic signs, peaking within minutes)
- Panic disorder (recurrent unexpected attacks plus persistent worry or avoidance)
- Crowd or escape panic (disordered mass flight at an egress, fire, or crush)
- Combat or battlefield panic (breakdown of unit cohesion under fire)
- Financial or bank panic (contagious run on deposits or liquidity)
- Moral panic (disproportionate public alarm about a folk devil, Cohen's sense)
- Animal herd panic (contagious flight in livestock or wildlife)
- Nocturnal or sleep-related panic (attacks from sleep without an external cue)
- Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Identifiers and schemes
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Wikidata - Q505148 - panic attack
- Wikidata - Q741713 - panic disorder
- ICD-11 - 6B01 - Panic disorder (WHO)
- DSM-5-TR / ICD-10-CM - 300.01 / F41.0 - Panic disorder; a panic attack is a specifier, not a standalone DSM code
- MeSH - D016584 - Panic Disorder
- Which of these identifiers and schemes hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Standards and regulation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- DSM-5-TR panic-attack and panic-disorder criteria - American Psychiatric Association
- ICD-11 6B01 Panic disorder - World Health Organization
- NFPA 101 Life Safety Code (means of egress, occupant load) - National Fire Protection Association
- International Building Code egress and occupant-load provisions - International Code Council
- IMO guidelines on evacuation analysis for passenger ships (MSC circulars under SOLAS) - International Maritime Organization
- Deposit-insurance statutes that exist specifically to stop bank panics (e.g. Federal Deposit Insurance Act in the United States) - national banking authorities
- Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Emergency-department presentation of sudden chest pain, palpitations, and fear of dying that is later coded as a panic attack rather than acute coronary syndrome
- Stadium, station, and nightclub egress design that assumes clogging if density rises at a bottleneck
- Bank-run and liquidity-stress playbooks in central banking and deposit insurance
- Military and police training against contagious flight and loss of unit control
- Event and festival crowd management (barriers, one-way flows, stewarding) aimed at preventing crush, not at treating a psychiatric episode
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Typical measurements
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Duration of a typical clinical panic attack - peaks within minutes; commonly 5-20, rarely lasting hours - min
- Heart rate during an attack - 100-180 - beats/min
- Crowd density at which walking flow breaks and crush risk rises - flow degrades near 4; life-threatening compression often cited above about 5-6 - persons/m²
- Twelve-month prevalence of panic disorder in community surveys (high-income samples) - about 1-3 - %
- Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Crowd crush and traumatic asphyxia at bottlenecks even when the original threat is small or false
- Flight into a worse hazard (closed door, water, roadway) because appraisal is bypassed
- Cardiac work-up delay or, conversely, missed myocardial ischaemia when a panic attack is assumed
- Avoidance and agoraphobia after repeated attacks, shrinking work and travel
- Contagion of flight or of a bank run once others' behaviour is treated as information
- Freeze or tonic immobility that blocks egress
- Use of 'panic' as a post-hoc label that hides poor design, blocked exits, or crowd compression
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- Clinical coding: DSM-5-TR in US practice versus ICD-11 6B01 (and older ICD-10 F41.0) elsewhere
- Latino and Caribbean 'ataque de nervios' overlaps panic attacks but is not identical in cueing, dissociation, or cultural meaning
- Japanese パニック障害 follows the clinical loanword; 恐慌 is the usual term for financial panic
- Crowd-science literature (especially UK social-identity work) treats the Western 'people panic and trample' story as often false; coordinated helping is frequently observed
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Reported by the breadth pass; each item needs checking against its source before it becomes normative.
- fear - Fear is object-linked and can stay organised; panic is the surge that outruns appraisal and control.
- anxiety - Anxiety is anticipatory and often prolonged; a panic attack is abrupt and peaks within minutes.
- specific phobia - Phobic fear is cued by a defined stimulus and produces avoidance; unexpected (uncued) attacks define panic disorder.
- stampede / crowd crush - Those are physical mass-motion outcomes; panic is the psychological state and is neither necessary nor sufficient for a crush.
- moral panic - A media and political reaction to a folk devil, not an individual's autonomic fear surge (Cohen).
- software or kernel panic - An abort of a runtime or operating system; same English word, unrelated mechanism.
- acute stress reaction / fight-or-flight - Adaptive mobilisation to a present threat; panic is diagnosed when the surge is unexpected, disproportionate, or disorganising.
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of panic this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Sources
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) - Clinical definition of panic attack and panic disorder, peak-within-minutes criterion, and differential from other anxiety presentations (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).
- ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics: 6B01 Panic disorder - WHO diagnostic category for recurrent unexpected panic attacks with persistent concern or maladaptive behaviour (World Health Organization).
- Simulating dynamical features of escape panic - Physical crowd-panic model: clogging at bottlenecks, density-driven jams, and faster-is-slower (Helbing, Farkas & Vicsek, Nature 407, 2000).
- Folk Devils and Moral Panics - Sociological sense of moral panic as disproportionate public reaction, distinct from individual fear (Stanley Cohen, MacGibbon and Kee, 1972).
What the second pass must settle
- Does the registry intend panic to mean an individual episode, a broader action pattern, collective panic, or another concept within ACT.ACT?
- Does an existing world model already own this concept, requiring a registry link instead of a separate publication?
- What researched boundary should distinguish everyday self-described panic from a clinically defined panic attack without conflating either with panic disorder?
- Which descriptions of intensity, action capacity, and recovery remain useful across languages, cultures, and communication needs?
- Which authoritative guidance should govern escalation and handoff in the intended deployment setting when panic overlaps with possible immediate danger or medical concerns?