0000000000413594

AUTHOR

Julia M.b. Neng

The Effects of Bug-in-the-Eye Supervision on Therapeutic Alliance and Therapist Competence in Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Live supervision enables a supervisor to have direct insight into the psychotherapeutic process and allows him or her to provide immediate feedback to the trainee. Therefore, live supervision might be superior to traditional supervisory formats that only allow for the provision of delayed feedback. When considering the different live supervision formats, bug-in-the-eye (BITE) supervision is particularly promising because of its improved and less invasive procedure. The current study compared the efficacy of BITE supervision with that of delayed video-based (DVB) supervision. In the present study, 23 therapists were randomly assigned to either the BITE supervision or DVB supervision groups. …

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Implicit affective evaluation bias in hypochondriasis: findings from the Affect Misattribution Procedure.

Cognitive theories of hypochondriasis (HYP) suggest that catastrophic misinterpretations of benign body sensations are a core feature for the maintenance of the disorder. There is tentative support from an analog sample that the interpretation of illness-related information also involves an implicit affective component. This is the first study to examine this negative affective evaluation bias implicitly in patients with HYP. An adapted version of the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) with illness, symptom and neutral primes was used in 80 patients with HYP, and compared to 83 patients with an anxiety disorder (AD), as well as 90 healthy controls (CG). The HYP group showed significantly…

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Therapist competence and therapeutic alliance are important in the treatment of health anxiety (hypochondriasis)

The role of treatment delivery factors (i.e., therapist adherence, therapist competence, and therapeutic alliance) is rarely investigated in psychotherapeutic treatment for health anxiety. This study aimed to investigate the role of the assessment perspective for the evaluation of treatment delivery factors and their relevance for treatment outcome. Therapist adherence, therapist competence, and therapeutic alliance were evaluated by independent raters, therapists, patients, and supervisors in 68 treatments. Patients with severe health anxiety (hypochondriasis) were treated with cognitive therapy or exposure therapy. Treatment outcome was assessed with a standardized interview by independen…

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Exposure therapy changes dysfunctional evaluations of somatic symptoms in patients with hypochondriasis (health anxiety). A randomized controlled trial

Dysfunctional evaluations of somatic symptoms are considered a central factor in maintaining hypochondriasis. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether exposure therapy (ET) without cognitive restructuring is sufficient to change dysfunctional evaluations of somatic symptoms. The current study was based on a randomized controlled trial and compared patients with hypochondriasis (N=73) receiving ET or cognitive therapy (CT) to a wait list (WL) control group. In both the ET and CT groups, dysfunctional symptom evaluations changed significantly compared with the WL group. No differences between the ET and CT groups emerged. The relationship between the treatment condition (active…

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Changes in negative implicit evaluations in patients of hypochondriasis after treatment with cognitive therapy or exposure therapy

Abstract Background and Objectives Previous studies using modified versions of the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005) have revealed that there is an implicit negative evaluation bias of illness-related information in patients with hypochondriasis (HYP), which might be a maintaining feature of HYP. However, there is no evidence on whether this bias might be targeted successfully by effective treatments, such as exposure therapy (ET) or cognitive therapy (CT). This is the first study to examine the change in negative implicit evaluations in a randomized controlled trial, including individual CT and ET, compared to a wait-list control group for HYP. M…

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Health Behavior in Hypochondriasis

The relationship between health behavior and hypochondriasis has not yet been sufficiently examined, as previous studies investigated only individual dimensions of health behavior. In the present study, we extend current literature by examining multiple dimensions of health behavior. One hundred twenty-six participants, consisting of 40 participants with a primary diagnosis of hypochondriasis, 41 participants with a primary diagnosis of anxiety disorder, and 45 healthy controls, completed a multidimensional questionnaire for the assessment of health behavior and other measures for the evaluation of general psychopathology, illness anxiety, depression, and general anxiety. Patients with hypo…

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