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Cognitive Behavioral Aggression Treatment

NCT01264900 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: PHASE2 · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 120

Last updated 2016-03-04

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Aggressive behavior is a leading worldwide public health problem. Despite this, relatively little is known about how to best treat individuals who are highly angry and aggressive. A rich literature suggests that aggression is associated with a tendency to interpret situations as threatening or hostile even when they are not. This process is governed by a prefrontal-limbic circuit in the brain. A goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to reduce these kinds of hostile biases. Preliminary data by the PI suggests a 12- session cognitive behavioral aggression treatment (CBAT) may help reduce aggressive behavior and underlying hostile biases associated with affective aggression. To assess the efficacy of this treatment, 120 adults with high levels of anger and aggression will receive 12 sessions of either CBAT or supportive psychotherapy. All subjects will monitor their anger and aggressive behavior throughout the treatment electronic diaries. Subjects will also complete questionnaires and computer tasks to assess anger, hostile biases and related processes 1-week before treatment begins, and again 1-week, 6-months and 1-year after treatment ends. In addition, to understand the effects of CBAT on the brain, subjects will have their brains scanned (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) while they look at emotional pictures and complete computer tasks. The brain scans will occur once before treatment starts and once after treatment ends.

Our hypotheses are:

1. CBAT will reduce anger, aggression and hostile biases more than supportive therapy.
2. CBAT will decrease limbic activation and increase prefrontal activation to emotional pictures more than supportive therapy.

Conditions

  • Aggression

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Psychotherapy

Twelve weekly 50-minute sessions of individual cognitive behavioral aggression treatment or supportive psychotherapy

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Temple University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Michael S McCloskey, Ph.D · Temple University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
55 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2010-05-31
Primary Completion
2016-02-29
Completion
2016-02-29

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT01264900 on ClinicalTrials.gov