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Does the form or the amount of exposure make a difference in the cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment of social phobia? |
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Published in | The journal of nervous and mental disease. 2009, vol. 197, no. 7, p. 507-513 | |
Abstract | Exposure is considered to be an essential ingredient of cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment of social phobia and of most anxiety disorders. To assess the impact of the amount of exposure on outcome, 30 social phobic patients were randomly allocated to 1 of 2 group treatments of 8 weekly sessions: Self-Focused Exposure Therapy which is based essentially on prolonged exposure to public speaking combined with positive feedback or a more standard cognitive and behavioral method encompassing psychoeducation, cognitive work, working through exposure hierarchies of feared situations for exposure within and outside the group. The results show that the 2 methods led to significant and equivalent symptomatic improvements which were maintained at 1-year follow-up. There was a more rapid and initially more pronounced decrease in negative cognitions with the Self-Focused Exposure Therapy, which included no formal cognitive work, than with the more standard approach in which approximately a third of the content was cognitive. In contrast, decrease in social avoidance was more persistent with standard cognitive-behavior therapy which involved less exposure. The results indicate that positive cognitive change can be achieved more rapidly with non cognitive methods while avoidance decreases more reliably with a standard approach rather than an approach with an exclusive focus on exposure. | |
Keywords | Adult — Cognitive Therapy/methods — Fear/psychology — Feedback — Female — Follow-Up Studies — Humans — Implosive Therapy/*methods — Male — Phobic Disorders/psychology/*therapy — Psychotherapy, Group/methods — Speech — Treatment Outcome | |
Identifiers | PMID: 19597358 | |
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Research groups | Abus de substances (834) Médecine psychosomatique, neurosciences cliniques et mindfulness (690) | |
Citation (ISO format) | BORGEAT, François et al. Does the form or the amount of exposure make a difference in the cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment of social phobia?. In: The journal of nervous and mental disease, 2009, vol. 197, n° 7, p. 507-513. doi: 10.1097/NMD.0b013e3181aacc08 https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:19699 |