Generalized anxiety disorder is marked by excessive and unmanageable worry. It is believed to be maintained by cognitive (attention and judgment) biases toward threat-related stimuli and the use of worry (and associated tension) and overly careful behaviors as a means to avoid catastrophic images and associated autonomic arousal. CBT of generalized anxiety disorder involves cognitive therapy to address worry and cognitive biases and relaxation to address tension, as well as imaginal exposure to catastrophic images and displayed to stressful situations while response preventing overly cautious behaviors. The controlled effect size for CBT in generalized anxiety disorder was 0.51, indicating a medium effect although only two studies using a
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Based on thirteen studies, the authors concluded that psychological therapies, all using a CBT approach, were more effective than treatment as usual or wait list control in achieving clinical response at post-treatment . However, those studies examining CBT against supportive therapy (nondirective therapy and attention-placebo conditions) did not find a significant difference in clinical response between CBT and supportive therapy at …show more content…
The concept of loss of control is challenged further by experiments in which the patient is invited to try and deliberately lose control of worrying. Beliefs about the dangers of worrying are modified through education and experiments in which attempts are made to induce negative outcomes by worry alone. Positive beliefs about worrying are modified by strategies such as ‘worry modulation experiments’ in which predicted improved outcomes due to worry can be tested by purposely increasing and decreasing worry and observing the real- world effects of doing this. The meta-analysis calculating uncontrolled pre- to post-treatment effect sizes found much a larger overall effect size of 1.80.In eleven effectiveness studies, the pre- to post-treatment effect size for CBT in generalized anxiety disorder was 0.92 (Olatunji BO., Cisler JM., Deacon BJ. Efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders: a review of meta-analytic findings,
Based on thirteen studies, the authors concluded that psychological therapies, all using a CBT approach, were more effective than treatment as usual or wait list control in achieving clinical response at post-treatment . However, those studies examining CBT against supportive therapy (nondirective therapy and attention-placebo conditions) did not find a significant difference in clinical response between CBT and supportive therapy at …show more content…
The concept of loss of control is challenged further by experiments in which the patient is invited to try and deliberately lose control of worrying. Beliefs about the dangers of worrying are modified through education and experiments in which attempts are made to induce negative outcomes by worry alone. Positive beliefs about worrying are modified by strategies such as ‘worry modulation experiments’ in which predicted improved outcomes due to worry can be tested by purposely increasing and decreasing worry and observing the real- world effects of doing this. The meta-analysis calculating uncontrolled pre- to post-treatment effect sizes found much a larger overall effect size of 1.80.In eleven effectiveness studies, the pre- to post-treatment effect size for CBT in generalized anxiety disorder was 0.92 (Olatunji BO., Cisler JM., Deacon BJ. Efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders: a review of meta-analytic findings,