Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by unwanted intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviour like excessive checking and cleaning (compulsions). Cognitive theory proposes that everyone (or nearly everyone) has unwanted intrusive thoughts, but that those with OCD hold maladaptive beliefs that lead them to interpret such thoughts as catastrophic. As a …
Read More »Anxiety Sensitivity and Daily Cigarette Smoking in Relation to Sleep Disturbances in Treatment-Seeking Smokers
Sleep disturbances are highly common, particularly among individuals with anxiety symptoms or disorders. In fact, sleep disturbances and anxiety influence each other: sleep problems can serve as a risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders and, conversely, anxiety disorders can contribute to problematic sleep. Anxiety sensitivity, the fear of …
Read More »Psychometric properties of the Insomnia Catastrophizing Scale (ICS) in a large community sample
To catastrophize about poor sleep is likely something that everyone will encounter during episodes of sleep difficulties. The tendency to catastrophize about sleep disturbance and associated daytime consequences is particularly common among individuals with insomnia disorder. Due to a lack of self-report instruments designed to assess insomnia catastrophizing, we developed …
Read More »Predictors of treatment attendance and adherence to treatment recommendations among individuals receiving Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia
Insomnia is very common, affecting up to 37% of adults, and is linked to a host of mental and physical health problems. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is recommended as the first line treatment for insomnia by the National Institutes of Health, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and …
Read More »The effects of safety behavior availability versus utilization on inhibitory learning during exposure
Exposure therapy is a highly effective treatment for anxiety disorders. This approach calls for individuals to remain in anxiety-provoking situations long enough to acquire threat-disconfirming information about the situation and build new safety associations. A commonly debated aspect of exposure delivery is the inclusion/exclusion of safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are …
Read More »Emotion regulation and motives for illicit drug use in opioid-dependent patients
Cognitive-behavioral approaches for people with opioid use disorder may be more widely circulated in clinical settings with the recent Food and Drug Administration approval of a mobile app that provides cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to patients with opioid use disorder. As such, perhaps now more than ever, enhancing the precision …
Read More »Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for the treatment of current depressive symptoms: A meta-analysis
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy may help reduce current depression, but more long-term studies are needed. Depressive disorders are an extremely common category of mental health conditions around the world. Among all mental and substance use disorders, depression accounts for the largest proportion of disease burden (i.e., years that an individual lives …
Read More »Why we should know more about dropout: Identifying change-dropout patterns can help to estimate treatment progress in internet interventions
In their scientific work, researchers rely on the data available to them to draw conclusions based on empirical results. However, when values are missing the interpretation of results can be difficult especially if it remains unknown what caused the dropout to occur. With regard to studies in clinical psychology, this …
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