Facing Fears by Focussing on Behaviour, Body, or Mind?

Summary

Anxiety problems are a major concern of youth mental health given that the prevalence of anxiety disorders in Dutch adolescents aged 12 to 18 is approximately 10 percent. In this group, social phobia like speech or performance anxiety are among the most common. Intervention programs based on the principles of exposure-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) have proven to be the most effective and most applied in therapy for social anxiety among adolescents. Thus far, research has mainly focused on effectiveness of "intervention packages" consisting of multiple CBT elements (i.e., exposure plus cognitive restructuring and relaxation exercises). The most common CBT element in current intervention packages for anxiety in youth is exposure, which is often only applied after providing the child with cognitive restructuring (CR) and relaxation exercises (RE) as preparation for exposure. However, although most empirical evidence supports the value of the use of exposure, there is hardly empirical evidence for the additional value of CR or RE. In addition, it is unclear whether the combination of these elements with exposure is counterproductive compared to the use of exposure only. After all, without lengthening the treatment, the addition of CR and/or RE will leave the therapist and child with less time to spend on exposure exercises.This study proposes to evaluate the effectiveness of these three different types of CBT-elements in the treatment of speech/performance anxiety among adolescents.

Conditions

• Social Anxiety

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Cognitive behavioral therapy

All conditions start with a psycho-education session (PE). Subsequently, participants in condition A follow four exposure sessions (EX). Participants in condition B follow two cognitive restructuring (CR) followed by two exposure sessions. Participants in condition C follow two relaxation exercises sessions (RE) followed by two exposure sessions. All sessions will take place at their school in a group of five to eight adolescents (week 9,10,11,12,13,14). The sessions will be provided by a psychologist who receives training and supervision by a certified CBT therapist. The psychologist is assisted by a master student in psychology.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• ZonMw: The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Groningen

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Peter de jong, Prof · University of Groningen

• Maaike Nauta, Prof · University of Groningen

• Miriam Lommen, Dr · University of Groningen

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

12 Years

Max Age

15 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-11-06

Primary Completion

2019-01-31

Completion

2019-01-31

Countries

• Netherlands

Study Locations