Ehsan Matinfar; Imanollah Bigdeli; ALI Mashhadi
Abstract
The Symptoms of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) have been considered an index of cognitive control deficiency. The aim of this study was to investigate whether enhancing cognitive control over emotional stimuli can decrease worry intrusions and severity of the GAD symptoms. Based on the results ...
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The Symptoms of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) have been considered an index of cognitive control deficiency. The aim of this study was to investigate whether enhancing cognitive control over emotional stimuli can decrease worry intrusions and severity of the GAD symptoms. Based on the results of the structured clinical interview for the DSM-5 (SCID), 45 students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) who had GAD, were chosen to participate in this study. Then, they were assigned equally and randomly to the three conditions of intervention, control and active control groups. Subsequently, they completed the PSWQ, GAD-7, emotional stroop task, and Go/No Go task as pre-test. The intervention group received 16 sessions of the cognitive-affective control training using the emotional stroop with the trial-based feedback. Also, the active control group received the same amount of the training sessions of the emotional stroop with receiving no feedback, and finally, the control group was on a waiting list. After post-test assessments, the results of ANCOVA showed that the training sessions were effective for the stroop performance, reduction in worry intrusions, and GAD symptoms, while the training on the cognitive inhibition did not transfer to the behavioral inhibition. The findings revealed that not only cognitive control plays a major role in worry and GAD symptoms, but also cognitive control training might be a promising path to decrease the severity of anxiety disorders. Training with emotional stimuli can enhance performance, and using trial-based feedback can pave the way to get better clinical results.
faranak razzaghian; Imanollah Bigdeli
Volume 5, Issue 20 , December 2015, , Pages 1-23
Abstract
Depressionis one of the most important kinds of affective disorders and has been presented as the first weakening factor in humanity society that its high prevalence and complex nature has made necessary it to use new treatments. Considering that pharmacotherapy is often used in depression treatment, ...
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Depressionis one of the most important kinds of affective disorders and has been presented as the first weakening factor in humanity society that its high prevalence and complex nature has made necessary it to use new treatments. Considering that pharmacotherapy is often used in depression treatment, the present study was aimed to investigate the effectiveness of systematic motivational counseling and comparison it with pharmacotherapy. This research conducted with pretest- posttest plan with control group. The sample of this experimental study was consisted of 30 dysthymic female patients referred to psychological clinic in university of Firdausi Mashhad during 9 months in 2011 that were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to three groups (10 patients per group), one experimental group for systematic motivational counseling with pharmacotherapy, one for mere pharmacotherapy and one group for control group. Collecting data instruments were consisted of Beck Depression Inventory and Personal Concerns Inventory. In order to analysis the data; descriptive statistics and covariance analysis in inferential statistics surface had been used. The results of covariance analysis after adjusting the pretest scores showed thatthere is a meaningful differences between posttest scores of two groups (p<0/05). Investigation of adjusted means is indicator for efficacy of systematic motivational counseling with pharmacotherapymore thanmere pharmacotherapyandtwo experimental groups in comparison of control group had more decrease in depression symptoms. According to the results of this research systematic motivational counseling with pharmacotherapyis more effective thanmerepharmacotherapy in the treatment ofdysthymic patients.
