Do Psychologists Accept, Prefer, and Use Imaginal Exposure Over Other Techniques to Treat Generalized Anxiety? A Survey

Ross, Marina E.; Vidair, Hilary B.; Fordsham, Nathan

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4035457

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…The technique has effects as a standalone treatment and as part of CBT (Behar et al, 2009; Hoyer et al, 2009), and written variations show good outcomes (Fracalanza et al, 2014; Goldman et al, 2007). Yet the optimal parameters of imaginal exposure remain unclear and the technique has low clinician acceptability (Ross, 2018), which may be enhanced by the addition of rescripting (Arntz et al, 2007). Moreover, GAD is characterized by profound treatment resistance—CBT is reliably effective in only two‐thirds of cases (Robichaud et al, 2019)—and a relapsing course (Gyani et al, 2013), which suggests scope to improve treatment for GAD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self‐guided imagery rescripting for worry images: A preliminary experimental investigation

Stavropoulos,

Briggs,

Grisham

2024

J Clin Psychol

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BackgroundMental images of feared events are overactive and intrusive in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Imagery rescripting involves integration of positive or neutral imagery and corrective information into images to facilitate emotional processing, reduce imagery intrusions, and re‐structure underlying schema. Yet only one known study has applied the technique to treatment of worry. The present study aimed first to examine the relationship between trait worry and properties of future‐oriented worry images, and second to examine the efficacy of a self‐guided imagery rescripting intervention in improving individuals' response to their worries.MethodsParticipants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 365) identified their major worry and wrote the script of a worst‐case scenario mental image. Participants were randomized to three conditions: re‐writing the same worry image script (exposure), or writing scripts of either one or three positive alternative future‐oriented images (rescripting conditions).ResultsIn preliminary analyses, trait worry negatively predicted participants' ratings of worry images, including valence and ability to cope, and positively predicted distress, anticipated cost, and belief in their negative meaning. In experimental analyses, linear mixed‐effects models revealed anxious response and cognitive appraisal of the threat were significantly lower among participants allocated to rescripting relative to exposure. There was no effect of rescripting type.ConclusionsThis investigation demonstrated the impact of a future‐oriented imagery rescripting task on anxiety and cognitive biases associated with real worries in an unselected sample. Results may contribute to the development of imagery rescripting interventions for GAD.

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