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News
ACT Anxiety Treatment Guide Is Out
We want to let everyone know that our book “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for
Anxiety Disorders: A practitioner's treatment guide to using mindfulness,
acceptance, and value-based behavior change strategies” is finally out.
It is a therapist how-to guide that offers a
detailed and practical application of ACT to the treatment of persons suffering from
any of the broad class of anxiety disorders. Rather than a cookbook, we provide flexible,
session-by-session guidelines for applying and integrating acceptance,
mindfulness, and value-guided behavior change methods. The book offers
strategies that work to remove barriers to change and foster meaningful
movement forward. The first part of the book provides the conceptual
foundation for the treatment and the second part is the actual
step-by-step treatment manual. The book is supported by detailed
examples of individual therapy sessions, worksheets, and
experiential exercises—as well as key ACT pertinent assessment
measures. All exercises, worksheets, and assessments are on an
enclosed CD-ROM that includes easily reproducible electronic versions
of these materials. Amazon
sells the book at a nice discount for $37.
We’re also using the book as a manual for a large RCT with
Michelle Craske at UCLA where we compare it with traditional control-oriented CBT.
If anyone of you end up using the manual, we’d love to hear from you
about your experience with it.
John Forsyth & Georg Eifert
Results of Clinical Trial for Panic Disorder
We recently completed a preliminary clinical trial comparing an acceptance-enhanced version
of panic control therapy (PCT) vs. PCT as usual for persons suffering from panic disorder. This
project was headed up by Maria Karekla as part of her dissertation. The results showed that
an acceptance-based version of PCT produced equivalent positive outcomes relative to PCT as usual.
One of the more interesting findings to emerge from this research was with the pattern of
attrition. Very few participants discontinued acceptance-based PCT prior to the exposure
portions of the treatment, whereas a significant number of individuals enrolled in the PCT
group discontinued prior to exposure. This result suggests to us that an acceptance
framework may help take the sting out of exposure therapy, while also serving to dignify
the treatment (e.g., exposure in the service of client values, not symptom elimination). We
plan to follow this up shortly with a newly devised treatment protocol (see below).
For information about this project and related clinical activities and services, click
here.
Fear Learning and Bias for Threat
Several studies, supported by a grant from the
National Institute of Mental Health,
now have been completed addressing the relation between fear learning
(i.e., Pavlovian conditioning) and cognitive processing (i.e., attentional
bias for threat). The data across studies are converging nicely and suggest that
aversive learning experiences (both observational, direct, and derived)
can cause attentional bias for threat. For more information about this line
of experimental psychopathology research, check out our
Research Laboratory Page.
Happenings About the Lab
We are well into the dog days of summer. There is much to report. First, Carlos Finaly
and Megan Kelly recently defended their dissertations -- successfully I might add and before
finishing their predoctoral internships. Megan will be doing a postdoctoral fellowship
in the Fall of 2005 at Brown University, while Carlos will be coming back to New York
to embark on a predoctoral Fellowship at the Research Center for Addictions in Buffalo. Heartfelt
congratulations go out to both of you for a job well done!
Maria, Dr. Forsyth's first Ph.D. student, reports that things continue to go well personally
and professionally in Cyprus, where she holds an academic appointment in the Department
of Psychology at Intercollege.
Maria also reports that she is expecting a child -- we are so excited and can't
wait to hear about the new junior addition to the lab family
On the home front, many kudos go out to Tiffany Fuse (now the top dog in the lab) for
passing her qualifying exams with flying colors! Tiff is now neck deep in her
dissertation research focusing on how sexual assault survivors with
and without tonic immobility respond to stressful imagery. She is also
expecting a little one anytime now and we look forward to yet another junior
member of the lab family.
Both Velma Barrios and
Dean Acheson
have made the transition to their third year in the clinical program and
are busily getting
their 600/M.A. projects finished. Velma is writing up a study evaluating the role
of fear learning in the acquisition and extinction of attentional bias for threat,
whereas Dean is picking up on a project that is underway evaluating
an interoceptive conditioning model of panic.
Dr. Forsyth recently wrapped up two new books -- one describing an ACT treatment
protocol for all persons suffering from anxiety disorders (see above), and a second
book using an ACT approach for persons with problem anger -- ACT on Life, Not on Anger:
A New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Approach for Persons With Problem Anger.
Check back here and at the New Harbinger web
site for updates.
Finally, we wish to welcome Erica Moses who will be joining our lab this Fall as a
graduate student in the doctoral program in clinical psychology. We are looking
forward to having Erica as part of our lab family. We also welcome the many new
undergraduate research assistants that will be helping out with various research projects
this year and the next. It promises to be another exciting and productive year!
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