Self-efficacy Enhancement and Exposure Therapy

Ruhr University of Bochum

Status: Completed

Conditions: Specific Phobia

Treatments: Other: Control intervention; Other: Self-efficacy enhancement

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03105024

FP 1-1

Details and patient eligibility

About

Self-efficacy refers to the perceived belief to cope effectively, by personal efforts, with challenging situations and problems (Bandura, 1977). Basic research has shown that increases in perceived self-efficacy can enhance the extinction of fear (Zlomuzica et al., 2015). This study is aimed at translating these findings into a useful clinical application to augment exposure-based treatment outcome.

Full description

In this study, the effects of self-efficacy enhancement on treatment outcome in patients with height phobia will be investigated.

Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: i) virtual reality exposure + self-efficacy enhancement; ii) virtual reality exposure + control intervention; iii) virtual reality exposure only. The amount of exposure is identical across groups (i.e. maximum of 1 hour of exposure). The self-efficacy and the control intervention involve the retrieval of the exposure session with or without a focus on personal mastery experiences/achievements, respectively.

Treatment-induced changes as well as the effects of self-efficacy enhancement will be measured on the subjective level (i.e. in-vivo Behavioral Approach Tests, BATs; church tower), physiological level (heart rate during the BATs), and subjective level (subjective fear during the BATs as well as height-phobia related questionnaires) at each of the three assessments (i.e. pretreatment, after which the exposure will conducted on the same day, i.e. day 1; posttreatment, which is scheduled approximately 2-3 days after exposure, and follow-up assessment, which will take place 1-month after exposure).

Enrollment: 71 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 38 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• specific phobia (acrophobia)
• normal or corrected vision

Exclusion criteria

• somatic or neurological disease
• personality disorder
• bipolar disorder
• acute drug- or alcoholabuse
• pharmacological treatment within the past 4 weeks
• mental retardation
• any schizophrenic disease

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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71 participants in 3 patient groups

Exposure + self-efficacy enhancement

Experimental group

Description:

After the virtual exposure session, participants will receive instructions to recall the exposure session with a focus on the personal mastery experiences/achievements made during exposure.

Treatment:

Other: Self-efficacy enhancement

Exposure + control intervention

Active Comparator group

Description:

After the virtual exposure session, participants will receive instructions to recall the exposure session

Treatment:

Other: Control intervention

Exposure only

No Intervention group

Description:

Treatment as usual: no intervention after the exposure session will be given.