Symposia
Transdiagnostic
Brittany A. Jaso, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders
Boston, Massachusetts
Nicole D. Cardona, M.A.
Graduate Student
Boston University
boston, Massachusetts
Elizabeth H. Eustis, Ph.D.
Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders
Boston, Massachusetts
Madison Boschulte, PhD
Research Assistant
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts
Todd J. Farchione, Ph.D.
Research Associate Professor
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts
David H. Barlow, ABPP, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Emeritus
Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts
Disturbances in both positive (PA) and negative (NA) affect have long been observed in patients struggling with anxiety disorders. Previous research has shown the effectiveness of CBT treatment, compared to waitlist control, in upregulating PA (Wilner Tirpak et al., 2019), and downregulating the presence of NA. However, very little research has examined the ways in which CBT treatment impacts specific subgroups of emotion (e.g., sadness, joviality, self-assurance, etc.). The purpose of this study was to investigate how a transdiagnostic CBT treatment, the Unified protocol (UP), affects the intensity of PANAS-X emotion subgroups during treatment. Participants (n=88) were an outpatient sample (mean age = 30.95 years, 55% female, 83% Caucasian) diagnosed with either a principal diagnosis of panic disorder/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder by a trained clinician (Barlow et al., 2017). Exploratory one-way repeated measure ANOVAs were used to assess for change in severity of emotion subgroups (sadness, self-assurance, serenity, fear, fatigue, joviality, and hostility) as a function of timepoint (baseline, session 4, session 8, session 12, and post-treatment) within the treatment group. Main effects were detected for sadness, self-assurance, serenity, and fear (p < 0.05). Additional analyses were run to investigate the way in which the UP impacts change in emotion subgroups across principal diagnoses within the sample. Results from this study suggest that changes in some emotion subgroups (self-assurance, sadness, serenity, fear) are inherent to the UP’s treatment methods, while more focus may need to be taken to target others (joviality). Additionally, specific considerations may need to be taken when accounting for principal diagnosis.