Treatment of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the progression to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has changed drastically over the past few decades. Indeed, HIV/AIDS has transitioned from a near “death sentence” into a chronic condition that can be managed. Due to treatment advances, people living with HIV/AIDS can live …

Experiential avoidance (EA) refers to a person being unwilling to remain in contact with certain uncomfortable thoughts, bodily sensations, and emotions, and taking steps to escape or avoid these experiences. EA has been linked with several different psychiatric disorders, difficulty identifying one’s emotions, and difficulty with emotion regulation. It is …

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a highly effective form of psychotherapy applied to treat a range of mental illnesses including, but not limited to, depression, anxiety, somatic symptom disorders, substance use disorders, trauma-related disorders and eating disorders. CBT originated as an application of psychological research on learning theory to the …

Many randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is effective for many different mental health problems. However, one important factor to consider when interpreting findings from RCTs of DBT is patient dropout, as dropout can compromise the validity of trial findings. A greater understanding of patient …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for depression and patients who learn skills in CBT seem less likely to relapse. Between-session tasks (‘homework’), where patients practise skills learnt during sessions with their therapist are an integral part of therapy. Doing homework outside of the therapy session is associated …

Medical and health science graduate students experience more anxiety problems than the general population but are less likely to seek mental healthcare, despite the fact that many of these students learn about and even provide anxiety treatments. This incongruity may be due to concerns about stigma, anonymity, workload, and finances. …

Text by: Doyanne Darnell Each year in the U.S. 1.5-2.5 million people suffer traumatic injury requiring inpatient hospitalization. The nation’s trauma care system is highly effective in saving lives, being well-coordinated within geographic regions to provide a full continuum of medical care and responsive to best-practice guidelines based on up-to-date …