my wife had panic attacks when we were young and moved to Campbell River (BC) and both worked at the Pulp/Lumber mill there. I was beside myself; I didn't have a clue what it was all about, and felt like someone on Venus, trying to communicate with someone on Mars, with two cans and a string.
It is so very difficult to REALLY even attempt to feel another persons feelings, especially when one is feeling great themselves.
Well, we got that one figured out years later, wen it turned out that we chalked it up to removal from her friends and family, and the guilt associated with "abandoning" our previous connections with friends and family, but we knew that what we were doing was striking out on our own, to ensure a "better" future for our own family to come. I had all that I wanted (it was a man's world), but she missed those psychological connections to others, that I, being a man, could care less about. I made friends easily, while she could not (not for trying, it just seemed a big empty world for her, wheras, I reveled in the novelty and the challenges and the beauty of a big new world.
Panic attacks, in my experience are a feeling of lost control; sitting on the edge of society; not knowing how to fill one's soul with a feeling of security. They seem to manifest themselves worst during "thinking periods", when one can be overwhelmed by the perceived "emptiness and meaninglessness" of life. The only way that i've seen myself and others cope with panic attacks is to have FAITH that what one is going through is temporary, and that all the pieces of ones life will come together and meaning and happiness will be restored. BUT, it is very disturbing at the time of the attack , and there is not much that one can say to another that will convince then that things will be so, given time.
Panic attacks are dangerous, as suicidal thoughts can be manifest (or at least one feels like drastic change is neccessary, if one is ever to be "happy" again). It is a very difficult time , and one usually cannot be "talked" out of it. It does not respond as well to medication as depression does.
The only advice that i can offer is that medication CAN POSSIBLY help (but often doesn't), and psychiatric help can worsen the situation because one with panic attacks can't be understood, and indeed often rejects the admonitions of the so called "psychiatrist" because one knows that they are in their right mind, but just can't put a finger on the origin and resolve that is neccessary to break the condition.
That's my humble opinion anyway. cs