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Brief Anxiety Skills Training Intervention for Veterans in Primary Care

NCT04829240 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 177

Last updated 2025-09-05

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Anxiety symptoms are common among primary care patients, but anxiety is undertreated. Brief behavioral (non-medication) anxiety treatments are needed. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether a brief anxiety treatment designed for VA primary care is more effective at reducing anxiety symptoms and impairment in Veterans compared to usual care. The brief anxiety treatment, Veterans Anxiety Skills Training (VAST), was designed to be evidence-based (emphasis on cognitive-behavioral skills), transdiagnostic (applicable to a wide range of anxiety symptoms), feasible for integrated primary care (no more than 6 brief \[30-minute\] sessions), and Veteran-centered (tailored to Veterans and personalized to individual patients). A total of 170 adult Veteran primary care patients from the Syracuse and Western New York VA healthcare systems who are experiencing anxiety symptoms will be recruited and randomly assigned to receive the brief anxiety treatment or usual care. The investigators will compare anxiety symptom severity and functional impairment between the two groups at baseline and at post-assessment (at 16 weeks) and follow-up assessment (at 28 weeks). The investigators will also examine predictors of treatment response among those receiving VAST and whether providers deliver VAST as intended.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Veterans Anxiety Skills Training Intervention

Modular anxiety intervention designed for Primary Care-Mental Health Integration settings, including up to six 30-minute sessions occurring approximately every 2 weeks, in which Veterans select modules of interest to them to complete, with an emphasis on psychoeducation and cognitive-behavioral coping strategies for self management of anxiety symptoms

BEHAVIORAL

PCMHI Usual Care

Appointment with Primary Care-Mental Health Integration provider at local primary care clinic for anxiety treatment; provider delivers whatever interventions they deem appropriate and collaboratively decides with patients whether and when to meet again as in routine PCMHI care

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • VA Office of Research and Development

    lead FED

Principal Investigators

  • Robyn L. Shepardson, PhD · Syracuse VA Medical Center, Syracuse, NY

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-08-17
Primary Completion
2025-05-31
Completion
2025-08-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases

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 NCT04829240 on ClinicalTrials.gov