Attention Bias Modification Treatment Found Effective for Social Anxiety Disorder

People with social anxiety disorder may benefit from an intervention that trains them to focus their attention on neutral facial expressions more than negative ones, according to areport inAJP in Advance. In a clinical trial, participants with social anxiety disorder who received 10 sessions of an attention bias modification treatment over 12 weeks experienced similar symptom improvements as those who received 12 weeks of escitalopram —a first-line treatment for the disorder.“Social anxiety disorder involves chronic fear and avoidance of scrutiny,” wrote Gal Arad, M.A., of Tel Aviv University, Daniel S. Pine, M.D., of the National Institutes of Mental Health, and colleagues. “Patients with social anxiety, as compared to healthy peers, dwell longer on scowling faci al expressions, a tendency implicated in the maintenance of the disorder.”To test if shifting one ’s attention from negative expressions to more neutral ones might reduce social anxiety symptoms, Arad, Pine, and colleagues recruited 105 adults (average age 31) seeking treatment for social anxiety. The participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups:One group received 12 weeks of gaze-contingent music reward therapy (GC-MRT).Another received 12 weeks of escitalopram (up to 20 mg/daily).The third group was placed on a waitlist for 12 weeks.Participants in the GC-MRT group received one introductory session the first week, where they learned about how GC-MRT works. Beginning week 2 through week 5,...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: American Journal of Psychiatry eye-tracking intervention facial expression gaze-contingent music reward therapy scowl Social anxiety disorder Source Type: research