Article

Symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can manifest in various ways. One fascinating but understudied form of OCD is sexual orientation-OCD (SO-OCD). Individuals with SO-OCD experience obsessions and fears about their sexual orientation changing against their will. In response to their obsessions, individuals with SO-OCD may perform compulsive rituals that include …

Social anxiety refers to fears of social interaction and/or performance situations. When social anxiety is accompanied by significant distress or impairment in one’s social life, work, or education, an individual is said to “have” Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Although social anxiety is a ubiquitous phenomenon, the current psychiatric diagnostic system …

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders typically involves clients confronting the anxiety-inducing objects and situations they would typically wish to avoid. Through repeated exposure to anxiety, clients increasingly learn to question, review and correct their anxious appraisals and beliefs and gradually experience less anxiety over time. However, certain individual characteristics …

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psychological treatment that has a strong scientific support of effectiveness for several psychiatric disorders, primarily anxiety disorders. However, at present there is no overall agreement on what counts as ‘CBT’. One reason is that CBT is commonly perceived as including a broad range of …

Mounting evidence indicates that pain can motivate cigarette smoking behavior, smokers have reliably endorsed the use of tobacco to cope with pain, and there is reason to suspect that pain may impede smoking cessation. Smoking-related outcome expectancies are among the best predictors of cigarette consumption and relapse, and the goal …

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) has been understood as a dispositional tendency to view the presence of negative events as unacceptable and threatening, regardless of the likelihood of those events occurring. The preference over the 12-item vs. 27-item of the IUS has been central to debate. The goals of the present …

Psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance are equivalent (with somewhat different connotations) concepts and refer to an unwillingness to remain in contact with particular private events. This concept is most often measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II) and is strongly related to psychopathology and behavioral effectiveness. In this study, …

Culturally validated rating scales for social anxiety disorder (SAD) are of significant importance when screening for the disorder, as well as for evaluating treatment efficacy. This study examined construct validity and additional psychometric properties of two commonly used scales, the Social Phobia Scale and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale, in …

The International Intrusive Thought Interview Schedule (IITIS) was used to assess and compare the unwanted intrusive thoughts (UITs) reported in a group of patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and a non-clinical group. Although all participants reported at least one type of intrusion, OCD patients experienced more intrusive thoughts than …

Despite the well-documented efficacy of cognitive behavioral treatments for anxiety disorders, the acceptability of these treatments remains an under-researched area. A better understanding of acceptability could help to improve the initiation of, and engagement in, these effective interventions. Recent research has suggested computerized interventions of anxiety-related risk factors may be …