CBT vs. ABM vs. for Social Anxiety

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Status: Completed

Conditions: Social Phobia

Treatments: Behavioral: Attention Bias Modification (ABM); Behavioral: Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01909193

1624

Details and patient eligibility

About

Adults with Social Anxiety Disorder will be pseudo randomly assigned to either an individual cognitive behavior therapy, attention bias modification treatment (allocation ratio - 1.5:1).

Outcome measures will be social anxiety symptoms and severity as measured by gold standard questionnaires as well as diagnosis of social anxiety disorder derived from structured clinical interviews based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) IV criteria.

The investigators expect to find significant reduction in social anxiety symptoms in all of the groups, with the cognitive behavior therapy group showing greater reduction in symptoms than the other groups. Mechanisms of change in all of the groups will be examined via measures of cognitive biases, affect, and other common and specific factors.

Full description

120 Adults with Social Anxiety Disorder will be pseudo randomly assigned to either an individual cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), attention bias modification treatment (ABM)).

Outcome measures will be social anxiety symptoms and severity as measured by gold standard questionnaires as well as diagnosis of social anxiety disorder derived from structured clinical interviews based on DSM-IV criteria.

The investigators expect to find significant reduction in social anxiety symptoms in all of the groups, with the cognitive behavior therapy group showing greater reduction in symptoms than the other groups. Mechanisms of change in all of the groups will be examined via measures of cognitive biases, affect, and other common and specific factors.

Enrollment: 69 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 75 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Diagnosis of Generalized Social Anxiety Disorder, LSAS>50
• If on medication, patients must be on a stable dose
• Hebrew language fluency

Exclusion criteria

• Primary Axis I or Axis II disorder other than SAD
• suicidal ideation
• Substance dependence within the past three months or current substance abuse
• Mental retardation or another pervasive developmental disability
• Current or past schizophrenia or psychosis, current bipolar disorder, or organic brain syndrome

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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69 participants in 2 patient groups

Attention Bias Modification (ABM)

Experimental group

Description:

Attention training via 8 weekly repeated trials of a dot-probe task intended to direct attention away from threat stimuli.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Attention Bias Modification (ABM)

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Experimental group

Description:

CBT will consist of 16-20 weekly individual treatment sessions aimed to reduce symptoms via cognitive and behavioral interventions

Treatment:

Behavioral: Cognitive Behavior Therapy